


They're Writing Songs of Love (But Not for Me)

by Linsky



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst, First Time, M/M, Pining, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmate-Identifying Timers, Soulmates, pretend dating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-10-07
Packaged: 2018-04-12 13:19:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 34,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4480754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linsky/pseuds/Linsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a little raised piece of plastic on the underside of his wrist, parallel to the veins and about the size of a razor’s head. Patrick would expect it to get broken in two seconds in a hockey game, except that it seems to be made of some kind of indestructible material that never cracks. It has a little inset screen where numbers can display like on an old digital watch, and in theory, those numbers count down the days until he meets his soulmate.</p>
<p>Patrick’s has been blank his entire life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ETA on November 19, 2015: In light of the recent developments in (and closure of) the Patrick Kane case, I'm unlocking this fic and reversing my stance on writing more about him. I won't go into it in detail here, but feel free to come talk to me on [Tumblr](http://linskywords.tumblr.com) if you'd like.
> 
> Original author's note:
> 
> I finished writing the draft of this story just before the news came out about Patrick Kane, and I've gone back and forth on what to do with it many times. If you don't want to read this for any reason, please don't. But if you do want to read it, let me say: the Patrick Kane in this story is fictional and is NOT intended to be an endorsement of the real Patrick Kane or any of his actions. I don't think that distinction is strong enough to let me keep writing about him in the future, but this story existed in its (rough, drafty) entirety before the news broke, and I've decided I'd rather share it than let it die. I'll probably be posting a bit on [Tumblr](http://linskywords.tumblr.com) about this, so if you're interested in hearing more about my thought process, please come check me out there.
> 
> As for the story itself: this is an AU based on _Timer_ , a quirky little romantic comedy (for a loose definition of "comedy") that I ran across a couple of years ago and watched because it stars Emma Caulfield of _Buffy_ fame. You do NOT need to see the movie to read this story; I mostly stole its soulmate premise, though there are also a few plot elements echoed here.
> 
> Note: I messed with the romance timelines of some of the other Hawks to make this work, most notably Duncs and Kelly-Rae's. Sorry, guys.
> 
> Title from the Gershwin classic.

It’s a little raised piece of plastic on the underside of his wrist, parallel to the veins and about the size of a razor’s head. Patrick would expect it to get broken in two seconds in a hockey game, except that it seems to be made of some kind of indestructible material that never cracks. It has a little inset screen where numbers can display like on an old digital watch, and in theory, those numbers count down the days until he meets his soulmate.

Patrick’s has been blank his entire life.

***

This girl, Carly, though. The team is out at a bar—Tuesday night, so it’s pretty chill—and Patrick’s been talking to her for a couple of hours now. It’s always hit or miss with people who don’t have timers: usually it means that they’re old and have been with someone since before the technology took off, or that they don’t believe in them and don’t want to bother with anyone who does. But Carly’s in college and single and fun, spirited. Her mom didn’t want her to get one too young, she says when Patrick asks her. She didn’t want her to have that hanging over her teenage years.

Patrick doesn’t get that at all. His mom was one of the first people to have a timer, back when they were still a questionable new thing that almost no one had heard of. She used to tell them how she knew when she got it that it would probably be blank—not enough other people with timers in to make it likely that her soulmate had his yet. But they had put it in her arm at the clinic, and right away, numbers had popped up: “Seven months and twenty-one days,” Patrick and his sisters would chant along with her, when she got to that part of the story. And seven months and twenty-one days later, she met Patrick’s dad.

It was their favorite bedtime story growing up. Patrick always liked the sense of surety: that his family was meant to be. It was always going to happen. And someday it would be that way for him.

Carly smiles when he tells her about it. “But—your timer doesn’t say anything yet?” she asks.

Patrick tries not to let his face do anything at that. It’s not like he isn’t used to it. He and his sisters all got their timers on their fourteenth birthdays, the first day they were allowed. Their mom baked a cake and bought balloons and hovered anxiously to see what the timer would say. Patrick’s had been blank—no surprise, the people at the clinic said, since he was only just fourteen and his soulmate might not even be old enough to have her timer yet. But then Erica got hers, and Jess, and Jackie, and theirs all lit up, and still Patrick’s was blank. Still is, seven years later.

“I guess my soulmate just has gotten hers,” Patrick says.

He gets Carly’s number that night. He doesn’t try to take her home: hooking up is what you do with the girls with timers, the ones who know you aren’t the one and don’t want you to pretend. Patrick’s mother told them once how people used to date all the time—how people needed to spend a long time with each other before they knew whether they were right for each other. How sometimes serious relationships would even grow out of hookups (and wasn’t that a fun topic to hear about from his mother’s lips).

“You’re lucky. You don’t have to worry about that,” she used to say to Patrick and his sisters when they were little. “When you meet the right person, you’ll know.”

***

The other guys give Patrick a hard time when he comes back to the table with Carly’s number. “Time for another trip to the clinic?” Sharpy asks.

“Fuck off,” Patrick says.

“Yeah, shut up, Sharpy,” Duncs says. “Not all of us zero out in college.” His fingers are tapping on his pint glass, and Patrick can guess why: his timer is set to go off in a couple of weeks. Two weeks from now, Duncs is going to meet the love of his life.

For a moment Patrick allows himself to imagine that surety, and it licks through his belly like fire.

“Sucks to be you, then,” Sharpy says, “because I’ve already nabbed the finest lady of them all.” He spreads his arms out over the back of the booth. “Yes, the fairest damsel ever to walk this earth—”

“You are not fucking telling this story again,” Jonny says, stone-faced as he always is when the question of timers comes up.

“It was a fresh spring day,” Sharpy says, pitching his voice high and dramatic. “Birds were singing, love was in the air, and my timer had zeroed out at midnight. I was strolling innocently along—”

“Innocent,” Seabs says, and covers it with a cough.

Sharpy glares at him. “Strolling innocently along, as I said, when who should come by but a lovely nursing student. Truly, her beauty put the day to shame. Our timers mirrored our hearts, beeping madly—”

“Your hearts were beeping?” Patrick says.

Sharpy scowls. “Okay, does one of you want to tell the story?”

“I think we’re okay with that story not being told,” Jonny says, and Duncs nods fervently.

“Aw, Duncsy,” Sharpy says, clapping him on the back. “Your day will come. Fourteen days from now, to be precise.”

“Don’t remind me,” Duncs says, looking terrified.

***

They leave the bar a little while after that, and Patrick and Jonny end up waiting for a cab together. Patrick’s sleepy, and satisfied with the evening. He’s already thinking about what to text Carly tomorrow.

“So that girl, back there,” Jonny says. “No timer?”

“Duh.” Like Patrick would try to date a girl with a timer. Talk about an exercise in futility.

“Right, of course.” Jonny looks down. It seems weird, until Patrick notices that he’s looking at his arm, where his timer is hidden by his sleeve. Patrick doesn’t need to see it to know what it says: fourteen years, eight months.

And…that makes it a little less weird. It can’t be easy, knowing you won’t meet your person for a decade and a half. Patrick elbows him to lighten the mood. “What, did you have your eye on her, man? Sorry; I was just the hotter commodity tonight.”

“As if.” Jonny swats at Patrick’s head. “I have way better taste than to go after your type of girl.”

“Hey, Carly was totally classy!” Patrick says, because ouch, and also because Jonny’s way off base here. “She’s in college and everything.”

Jonny’s lip twitches. “You sure you’ll be able to keep up with her, then?”

“Oh, it is on,” Patrick says, and as a result they’re grappling furiously when the cab finally comes. It’s a little embarrassing, but Patrick maintains that Jonny letting him go to talk to the cab driver totally counts as a win, excuse you, Jonathan, yes it does, so that’s fine.

The thing is, he’d rather have a timer that says what Jonny’s does than a timer that’s blank. At least Jonny knows.

***

When Patrick was in his teens, he watched his timer every day.

“You’re lucky,” his mom used to tell him. “Your sisters know they have to wait until their twenties to meet their soulmates. Yours might be just around the corner.”

At first Patrick liked that: the idea that he’d wake up one morning and his timer would say three days or two months or something like that. As long as it was blank, there was potential. But then more and more of his friends got their timers, some at fourteen, some at fifteen, and by the time they were sixteen, almost all of theirs said something. A few people even zeroed out right away and walked around the high school arm in arm with their soulmate.

His friend Nick’s was blank for a while, too. Patrick and Nick used to exchange glances about it, commiserating, when his friends would talk about meeting their timer people in three years or eight or whatever. It made Patrick feel better to know he wasn’t alone. But then Nick’s lit up—six years and three months—and Patrick was the only one left.

Well, except for Allison. She was a sophomore like he was, but young for their year, and her mom had promised her a timer on her sixteenth birthday. Patrick saw the brightness of her smile across his History classroom and thought, _Okay._ Everyone else around them had a different soulmate waiting for them. She was the only person at school who had a chance of being his, and vice versa, so it just made sense. 

He wasn’t too surprised when she said yes to a date. He took her to see some dumb teen movie and bought her candy. She laughed at all the things he laughed at and tasted like licorice when he leaned over in the darkness to kiss her.

He was so excited when her sixteenth birthday came around. It fell on a Saturday, so she was having a big party that night. Patrick meant to wait until the party to ask her, but by six o’clock he couldn’t wait any longer.

“So this is it, huh?” he asked over the phone, after forcing himself to talk about normal things like what she was planning for the party. “When are you going to get it? I was thinking I could come with you, but—”

“Patrick,” she cut him off, and something in her voice made it suddenly harder to breathe. “I got it today.”

Patrick just sat with the phone to his ear for a minute. “Oh,” he said finally.

“Yeah.” He could hear how bad she felt about it. “So, I guess…you know.”

“Right,” he said. “Well, I’d better go.”

“We can still…”

“Yeah,” he said, though he knew they wouldn’t. And then, before he could stop himself, “How long is it for?”

“Oh,” she said, and now he could hear the happiness in her voice, even though he didn’t think it was on purpose. “A year. One year and three days.”

He didn’t go to her birthday party that night.

***

Since then, Patrick’s dated lots of other girls without timers. Anytime he meets one, he tries to at least talk to her—though finding them in the first place has been harder and harder as he’s gotten older. There just aren’t that many reasons not to get a timer these days, now that they’ve been proven not to mess with your brain chemistry or anything.

When he goes to Worlds at seventeen, he checks out the wrists of the players from other countries. Maybe he’ll find out that other countries have different customs, fewer timers. He’d go all around the world if it meant finding his person. But everyone he sees has a timer.

“It only takes one person,” his mom likes to tell him. “You’ll meet her. And then it won’t matter how long you had to wait.”

It’s not the waiting that bothers Patrick; it’s the uncertainty of it. All around him, people are planning their lives around when they’ll meet their soulmates: _I’m gonna finish college in three years instead of four, so that I’m free to move wherever she wants when I meet her._ Or, _I want to live abroad. I’m not going to meet my soulmate until I’m twenty-eight, so might as well have some fun first, right?_

Patrick can’t plan anything. And maybe that’s okay, because he’s headed for the NHL, he knows it, and that means a lot of things are going to be out of his control. Maybe it’s better that he’s not trying to plan around a soulmate in the middle of that.

He has hockey, anyway. That can be his soulmate for now.

***

The Hawks are on the older end of the age spectrum when he starts playing with them, and nearly everyone’s zeroed out. It’s technically possible to remove your timer once it’s zeroed out—it’s not like it has a function anymore—but almost no one does. It’s a sign to the rest of the world, a marker that you’ve found your person.

Jonathan Toews is only nineteen, though, and he still has a countdown on his timer. Patrick is glad of it, secretly, selfishly, because it means that they share the attention when reporters start going for a human interest angle.

Patrick’s not expecting anyone to care initially, but it comes up right away. “And now the question everyone’s interested in,” one reporter says when the two of them are at some kind of meet-the-rookies press session in October, and they’ve already covered all the usual team and background questions. “What does it say on those wrists?”

The room chuckles, and Patrick sees Jonny smile dutifully. Probably everyone in the room already knows what it says on their timers, but obviously they want to make them talk about it.

Jonny looks at Patrick, but Patrick’s not bailing him out of this one. Jonny sighs and rubs his neck. “Um, well, as you can probably see, I’ve got over sixteen years left on mine.”

“That’s a long time,” the same woman says. “How do you feel about making some lucky lady wait until you’re in your mid-thirties?”

More chuckles and Jonny forces a laugh. God. It’s not like he has any choice about it, Patrick thinks. Isn’t that “lucky lady” also making him wait? “I’m just glad I’ll be able to focus on hockey for the foreseeable future,” Jonny says.

It’s the right answer, the textbook answer. Patrick still wants to make that lady wipe the grin off her face, though, especially when she turns to him. “How about you, Patrick?” she asks. “Will there be new love in the Hawks family soon?”

His smile feels like it’s being dragged up his cheeks by sheer force. “You’ll have to tell me,” he says, flashing her his blank wrist.

There are a few murmurs in the room. So maybe they didn’t know what was on his timer.

“Did you see that, ladies?” the reporter says into the camera that’s behind her. “If any of you don’t have timers yet, now’s the time. You could just be the one to net Patrick Kane, rising star of the Chicago Blackhawks.”

Patrick tries to keep smiling as the room breaks into laughter and cheers.

***

If the reporter’s instruction to the women of Chicago works, Patrick can’t tell. His timer stays as blank as it was when he was fourteen.

He doesn’t have much of a chance to do anything about it, either. Rookie year keeps him so exhausted he barely has time to sleep, and when he does go out with the guys (which, okay, is a lot, even if he can’t get drunk in the bars like God intended him to), there just aren’t that many women without timers. And most of those are too old for him, or laugh in his face when he tries to talk to them.

Sharpy evidently notices. He’s sort of appointed himself Patrick’s guardian, or chief tormenter, or some combination of the two. He slides into the booth next to Patrick one night when Patrick’s just struck out with the one woman in the bar without numbers on her wrist.

“Tough night, little man?” he asks.

“Fuck you, I’m almost as tall as you are,” Patrick says.

“You and your stats page just keep telling yourselves that,” he says, and Patrick sticks his tongue out at him.

Because Sharpy’s not completely awful, though, he slides Patrick a beer. Patrick drinks gratefully.

“You know, there are seven billion people in the world,” Sharpy says.

Patrick gives him a narrow look. “What is this, a math problem?”

“Just saying.” Sharpy lounges back against the booth. “Don’t go beating yourself up about the one who hasn’t gotten a timer in her arm yet.”

Patrick looks down at his beer, and Sharpy ruffles the hair at the back of his neck. “Anyway, we’re all your soulmates, aren’t we, Peeksy?”

Patrick makes a face at the nickname, but he can’t help but feel a little bit warmed at the thought. It’s kind of true. The team is hockey, and if hockey isn’t the closest thing he has to a soulmate, what is?

It’s not enough to keep him from staring at his timer sometimes, though. He tries not to do that much these days, but sometimes he can’t help looking and hoping. Hoping he’ll see the screen light up and numbers take shape while he’s watching.

“Maybe I just don’t have one,” he says to Jonny one night when they’re in their hotel room, moderately drunk off the vodka Hossa snuck in for them.

“One what?” Jonny sounds even vaguer than Patrick does.

“Soulmate.” Patrick shoves his wrist out, miscalculates, hits Jonny in the shoulder a little. Okay, so maybe they’re more than moderately drunk. “Do you think that’s why?”

Jonny shoves his wrist away. “Don’t be stupid. ‘Course you have one.”

“What if I don’t, though?” Patrick flops back on the bed and raises his wrist in front of his face. The blank face of the timer swims back and forth in his vision. “What if it never lights up?”

“Then you’ll meet someone anyway.”

Jonny sounds firm enough that Patrick raises his head and gives him a suspicious look. “That’s that thing you do, right?” Patrick asks. “The thing where you tell us we’re going to do something good so that we do it. Like, all captain-y and shit.”

“I don’t do that,” Jonny says, which is such a lie. They’ve been in the league for three months, and he’s already gunning for captain. Well, Patrick’s gunning for him to be captain, anyway, even if he’s not about to tell anyone that.

Patrick makes scoffing noises until Jonny throws the vodka bottle cap at him. It misses entirely and goes behind the bed, which means they’re just going to have to finish the bottle. Oh, well.

“Anyway, it’s true,” Jonny says. “The timer isn’t the only way to meet someone. You could fall in love without that.”

Patrick wants to ask if that’s what Jonny’s hoping for—if he doesn’t want to wait until he’s thirty-five or whatever to be with someone for real. That seems like too much to ask about, though, even through the vodka haze. Anyway, Patrick knows it doesn’t work: that even if Jonny did meet someone and fall in love, he would end up wanting to leave her when he finally met his person at thirty-five. That’s just how it works. The timer person is always going to be the right one for you.

Besides, Patrick would never admit this, because it’s selfish and horrible, but he doesn’t want Jonny to meet someone and fall in love. It gives Patrick a sense of security, knowing he’s not going to be the only one alone at team events and stuff. Not the only one without a soulmate on New Year’s. There’s Duncs, for now, but his timer just has a couple of years on it, and after that it’ll probably just be Patrick and Jonny.

Patrick hopes desperately that it doesn’t take him all sixteen years for his own timer to light up, but it’s a relief to know Jonny will be there either way.

***

It’s a good thing, too, because it keeps being basically impossible for Patrick to find someone to date. “There just aren’t enough people in bars,” he says to his sister Erica on the phone at some point in his rookie year. “This is the only way.”

“No,” she says for maybe the fortieth time in the last two minutes. “It’s a terrible idea, and you know it.”

“I don’t have to say who I really am,” he says.

“And what are you going to do, include a picture of someone else?” she says.

Patrick thinks about that. “Maybe just a picture of my abs.”

She makes a gagging noise. “No one is going to date you based on that.”

“Hey, I have sweet abs,” he says, but he exits the tab with the dating site in it. She’s probably right; he doesn’t need that in his life.

“Good choice,” she says, like she can tell he's done it.

He shuts his laptop and curls around it on the bed. “I just don’t get why everyone doesn’t get timer,” he says into the phone.

She makes a sympathetic _mm._ “More people getting them all the time, though. You don’t think it’s just fourteen-year-olds in the timer clinics, do you?”

He nods at that, feeling drowsy. Then his eyes pop open. “Oh God. What if my soulmate hasn’t turned fourteen yet?”

Erica laughs at that for so long that he hangs up on her. He calls her back, though, because that’s the kind of brother he is.

***

“Hey, what if she’s not fourteen yet?” Sharpy asks at the next team barbecue, and Patrick wants to impale himself on his fork.

“Just think about it,” Sharpy says, that evil glint in his eyes, as everyone laughs. “The future Mrs. Patrick Kane, walking into middle school…”

“You know, it’s not that impossible,” Seabs says. “You’re only nineteen. A five- or six-year age difference isn’t that bad, if you guys meet when you’re older.”

“She’s probably wearing a glittery tube top,” Sharpy says. “Peeks will pass her on the street one day and think, wow, I’ve just got to see what’s under that training bra…”

Patrick gags and throws a pickle at him.

“You wouldn’t wear a tube top with a training bra,” Jonny says, without looking up from the magazine he’s reading on a lawn chair. In French, of course. “That would be ridiculous.”

Sharpy zeroes in on him. “Been checking out clothing for your own future mate, Toes?”

“No, mine’s already in her fifties,” Jonny says, still in that slightly distracted monotone, eyes still on the magazine. “We’re going to meet when she’s sixty-five, and we’ll spend our joint retirement traveling the country in a mobile camper. We’ll hit up church bingo nights in every state and never have dinner after four p.m.”

Sharpy’s face contorts, probably from the frustration of being presented with a statement so ridiculous that all his chirping has already been done for him. Patrick laughs until he feels like he’s going to throw up his hamburger.

Jonny finally gives in and cracks a smile. Sometimes Patrick loves that guy.

***

At some point when Patrick was in his teens, he read that ninety-nine point nine percent of Americans have a timer by the time they’re twenty-one. And that includes, like, people who live in random rural areas and people who don’t get timers for religious reasons. So for a long time that age has been fixed in his mind as the date by which his timer is going to light up.

As a result, his twenty-first birthday is really depressing. It’s not like he really expects anything special, just because of the date, but he still feels a bigger swoop in his stomach than usual when he wakes up and looks down to see his timer still blank.

“Stupid worthless piece of crap,” he mutters at it, just in case it’ll make the timer feel as bad as he does. He flops back in his bed and calculates how much younger a girl would have to be if she's too young to have gotten her timer yet. Seven years isn’t _that_ much. Not if they meet when she’s twenty-one and he’s twenty-eight or something.

And if they met before then, well, they could just be friends for a while. He’s heard of that happening, when a timer couple is really different ages. It’s one of the reasons you can’t get a timer until you’re fourteen, actually: there are scientific reasons involving brain chemistry or whatever, but everyone knows that a big reason for the limit is how creepy it would be to be twenty and know you’re going to end up with a six-year-old or whatever. There are still conservatives who sometimes agitate for the age to be pushed up even further.

Not to mention the conservatives who don’t want anyone to get timers at all. Patrick’s horribly afraid his soulmate is one of those, and that he’ll never know. Or that she wouldn’t want him even if she did know. He curls on his side in the bed and hopes that she’s just young or whatever, even if it does mean he’ll have to wait, because there sure as hell aren’t a lot of other possibilities around.

It’s a couple weeks after that that he meets Carly.

***

Patrick calls her the day after they meet. She sounds all chipper on the phone and agrees to dinner on Friday. So he’s feeling pretty good about things, even if he’s trying not to get his hopes up.

In the meantime, he has to deal with his teammates being ridiculous, because Sharpy’s decided Duncs needs to remake his image in preparation for meeting the girl of his dreams.

“Isn’t—isn’t she supposed to love me no matter what?” Duncs says, looking like someone just pulled the skates out from under him.

“Well, of course she’ll _love_ you,” Sharpy says. “But there’s a question of what terms you want the relationship to start on. What if she’s super hot? You don’t want to be the slobby half of the couple, do you?”

“For Christ sake, Sharpy,” Jonny snaps, but by this point Duncs is looking terrified enough that Sharpy’s obviously going to win this one.

It’s decided that they’ll go shopping after practice. Because Jonny’s a freak, he decides he has to go along, to keep Sharpy in line. Patrick doesn’t really want anything to do with this—doesn’t need the reminder of what Duncs has and he still doesn’t—but Jonny drags him with them, because, in Jonny’s words, “If I have to suffer this, you have to suffer it, too.” And then, because Duncs and Seabs are ridiculously codependent, Seabs has to come, too, so there are five Blackhawks standing awkwardly in the menswear department at Nordstrom’s.

“It’ll be fine,” Seabs says to Duncs as they’re standing in the middle of, like, a million ties. “You could buy any of these.”

“But you should probably get this one,” Sharpy says, handing him a blue one.

Duncs holds it to his neck. “What if she doesn’t like this color?”

“She’s not going to care about your tie,” Jonny grates out, like he’s said it a million times already. Which, yes, he has.

“You’re right,” Sharpy says, head tilted and eyes narrowed at Duncs. “We should be worrying about that shirt. I’ll go to get you a new one.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Jonny says, but Sharpy’s already taken off in the direction of the shirts. “What does he think this is, a beauty pageant?”

“It’s really going to be okay,” Seabs says to Duncs. “I swear.”

“Right.” Duncs fumbles a bit as he lowers the tie into the box. “I mean, I know she’ll love me anyway, but…”

“She will,” Patrick says. He’s looking down, at a display of green ties. “She’ll love you no matter what. And you’ll love her. And then you’ll be together forever, and it will all be wonderful. That’s how it works.”

There’s silence after he says that, and he raises his head to see everybody looking at him: Seabs serious, Duncs still uncertain, Jonny with an expression Patrick can’t read. Patrick flushes. Okay, so maybe his tone was a little off there. “That…that’s what my mom always says,” he mumbles.

Seabs steps in and puts a hand on Duncs’ shoulder before Patrick can strangle himself with one of the ties to end his embarrassment. “You saw what it was like when I met Dayna, man,” Seabs says softly. “You think either of us cared what the other was wearing?”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.” Duncs puts down the two tie boxes he’s holding. “I guess you’re right.”

“Hey, Duncs!” Sharpy calls from over by the jewelry, unholy glee in his voice. “We forgot about cufflinks!”

Duncs’ face gets just a little bit paler.


	2. Chapter 2

Hockey’s always been a good distraction from anything else going on in Patrick’s life. It was good when he was a teenager, and it’s especially good now, when he’s trying not to be terrified at the prospect of his upcoming date with someone who could be the one. It’s not like he hasn’t been on other dates—but it’s rare that he meets someone without a timer who seems so normal and nice. He just has a feeling about it this time.

He wants to take that feeling as proof that this is a thing, that Carly’s the right one, even though he knows it probably isn’t. He’s heard people say things like that sometimes: that they looked at their soulmate and had a super strong feeling about them even before their timer started beeping. But it’s hard to say how much of that is just in retrospect, and anyway, Patrick has to assume this isn’t that. Has to assume, or he’ll be more nervous than he already is.

So he throws himself into practice on Friday and whines at Jonny until he plays NHL 10 with him afterward, mostly because Jonny gets grumbly about Patrick being the cover star. He tries to pretend he doesn’t, but Patrick can tell, and it’s hilarious.

It’s less hilarious when Jonny wins, but Patrick can deal with it. He can chalk it up to distraction today, anyway.

When six o’clock rolls around, Patrick kicks Jonny out and goes to shower. 

Carly looks great when he picks her up: little black dress and glossy brown hair in some kind of fancy ponytail that ends in a curl over her shoulder. Patrick wants to touch it, a little.

She’s really easy to talk to in the restaurant, and she knows hockey, too—or at least, he thinks she does, until she asks him how a shootout works, and then it becomes clear that she only knows what she’s read about him and the team in the few days since they met. Patrick likes that, though: she’s not pretending to have been a fan her whole life, the way some girls do when they’re trying to impress him, but she’s clearly interested enough to have tried to find out more about this thing he does. And she’s smart, too, good at picking things up when he explains them.

He gets kind of into it, actually, moving the wine glasses and salt and pepper shakers around as he explains different plays. It makes him forget to be nervous. Then he starts feeling guilty—partly because the waiter is giving them weird looks—and asks her what it’s like studying psychology.

“We just started learning about cognitive development,” she says, and oh, her face lights up when she says that. And Patrick likes that, too: he’s always been into people who have enthusiasm for something. “There are all these studies on how infants learn things in a completely different way than we do as adults—like, they can distinguish all consonant and vowel sounds in any language, even the ones they’ve never heard before, but the neural pathways change by like six months. Have you ever studied any cognitive linguistics?” So yeah, he’s totally intimidated by the time their entrees arrive.

Carly seems to like him, though. She’s kind of leaning into him as they leave the restaurant, and when he drops her off at the door, she lets him pull her close and kiss her on the mouth. Her lips are soft and pliant under his, and she’s tall, almost his height, which Patrick has always liked. She makes a little _mm_ sound when he strokes his hand down her back, and he thinks, _Yeah, maybe._

***

One thing Patrick’s learned over the years of dating timerless women is that it’s important not to scare them. He wants them to get timers, obviously, but bringing it up on the third date is a mistake. (So is bringing it up on the first date—hey, he was seventeen, okay?)

Carly’s not one of the women who seem intense on the subject. Still, “Let’s find out if we’re compatible for life” is an uncomfortable early-relationship topic. It kind of sucks, because he hates dating in this kind of uncertainty—why would you want to wait to find out if the two of you fit together when you could already know?—but he knows by now to give it some time. So he doesn’t bring it up yet.

“Take her to the clinic last night?” Seabs asks when Patrick walks into the locker room before the game the next day.

Patrick gapes at him. “How did you even—”

“Jonny,” Seabs says, like that’s a complete explanation, and yeah, Patrick guesses Jonny did know about the date. He didn’t expect him to really make note of it, though. Or to talk about it to their teammates.

“Of course I didn’t take her to the clinic,” Patrick says. “Geez, what do you take me for?”

“Wrong question, anyway,” Sharpy says. “The right question is, get laid?”

Patrick did not get laid, of course, because it wasn’t that kind of date. He doesn’t have to let Sharpy know that, though. He grins and sticks his tongue out a little. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Sharpy rolls his eyes. “Oh, yes, Peeks, _please_ tell us the details of your sex life.”

Patrick grins wider, not about to pass up an opening like that. “Well—”

“For fuck’s sake, people, get dressed already,” Jonny says, glaring them down from where he’s already in his pads like the overachiever he is. “Unless you’re all sitting this one out?”

Patrick starts stripping down. He figures he can tell them his made-up sexcapades another time.

***

The thing is, Patrick hasn’t had all that much sex.

Not none. But not all that much, either. He’s done the random hookup thing, and it doesn’t really do much for him. He gets off, the girls get off—or at least they seem to; he’s heard his share of fake-orgasm stories—but he doesn’t really feel all that much. From what he understands, sex is supposed to get a lot better when you’ve done it a few times with the same person. And it had better get better, because if the random hookups he’s had are all that sex is, he’s going to be massively disappointed.

He’s had repeats with some of the girls he’s dated, but not that often, and it’s not like you’re going to get a repeat with a girl who has a timer. So good sex is another thing that’s going to have to wait for him to find his person.

He doesn’t want to push any of it with Carly. He texts her the morning after their date to tell her what a great time he had, though, and they end up texting throughout the day until the game. It’s against the Stars, and he gets the game-winner in the third period. She sends him a congratulatory text with three exclamation points, and he reads it afterwards in the locker room and grins.

“Ah, twoo wuv,” Sharpy says, looking over his shoulder.

“Shut up,” Patrick says, even while he thinks, _is it, is it, is this it?_ He’s trying _not_ to get ahead of himself here. “I barely even know her.”

“Patrick doesn’t believe in true love until a timer tells him so,” Jonny says. Which is a little fair, but mean enough that Patrick gives him a hurt look. Jonny shrugs, looking kind of abashed.

Patrick gets that it’s not easy for Jonny, either, the timer thing. Still, he makes Jonny buy him a drink that night to make up for it. They end up getting pretty drunk, along with the rest of the team, and Patrick dances with women with timers for most of the night.

“See, isn’t this more fun than waiting for a timer to go off?” Jonny yells in his ear when Patrick slumps back in the booth after a few particularly vigorous songs.

Patrick shrugs. It’s not like he has a lot choice in the matter. “Doesn’t suck,” he shouts back.

***

Patrick and Carly go on a couple of other dates during the week following, Patrick trying to get the balance right to build relationship momentum without rushing things. The Hawks have a homestand, and Carly’s class schedule means she can meet him for lunch and afternoon stuff even on days when he has a game in the evenings. 

It’s December, so everything’s decorated for Christmas, which it turns out Carly loves nearly as much as Patrick does. “My family goes all out,” she says. “We have this light-up nativity scene we put in our yard, which I think makes the neighbors hate us. Maybe because we add in Santa and all his elves looking into the manger.”

She grew up outside the city. They don’t talk about him meeting her family, because it’s way too soon, but Patrick can’t help but wonder. If she had a timer, and it beeped for his, there would be no question about him coming home with her for Christmas this year. He would meet her parents and little brother and the crazy uncle who apparently still makes them pull Christmas crackers every year.

“He has them imported from England, because apparently only the British know how to celebrate Christmas right,” she tells him, laughing. “We tried to tell him the holiday wasn’t invented there, but he didn’t believe us.”

She talks about her schoolwork a little, too, and the studies she’s helping with this semester. She’s still intimidatingly intelligent, but hey, Patrick can enjoy a challenge. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t hang around Jonny so much.

“Would you be up for coming to a game sometime?” he asks her late in the week.

“Of course,” she says, like it’s obvious. “The way you get starry-eyed when you talk about playing? Wouldn’t miss it.”

“I do not get starry-eyed,” he says, though that’s probably a lie.

He gets her tickets to their game against the Wild the next night. He introduces her to Abby Sharp when she gets to the UC so that she’ll have someone to sit with in the friends and family section. Then he realizes what a terrible idea that was, because Abby takes her by the arm and grins all bright and says, “Dating Patrick, eh? I’m sure we’ll have so much to talk about.”

“That was a terrible idea,” Seabs says, next to him, as Patrick watches them go off with growing horror.

“Sometimes I forget that she’s a Sharp,” Patrick says.

***

They beat the Wild, and it’s awesome. They all decide to go out after, even Duncs, who’s still hyperventilating all over the place as two weeks turns into one. “Wanna come?” Patrick asks Carly, when she comes to give him a congratulatory hug.

“Yeah, that’d be awesome,” she says, and holds onto his arm as they all head out.

The bar is fun, except for (or maybe because of) the part where Sharpy decides that Duncs needs to pick up, as part of his last hurrah as a single man, and keeps dragging him over to girls at the bar. Patrick loses it laughing after Duncs comes back, shell-shocked and dripping from what was a clearly a drink that got thrown in his face.

“Is he okay?” Carly asks Patrick in a whisper after Duncs sits down and proceeds to stare off into space for a couple of minutes.

“He’s just nervous,” Patrick says vaguely, coming down from his giggles. Then, because there’s no other explanation he can give: “His timer is up in a week.”

“Oh.” Carly’s interest sharpens a little. “Wouldn’t he be happy about that?”

Patrick can’t really answer, because yeah, there isn’t really any reason for Duncs not to be happy about it. Patrick sure as hell wouldn’t be freaking out about it if it were him. Duncs is about to meet his person. His life will never be the same again. And—okay, yeah, maybe Patrick can get why someone would be a little stressed out about that. But that doesn’t mean he still isn’t jealous.

Sharpy slides in next to them. “Duncs, my man, you’re missing out on some great ladies out there.”

That gets Duncs out of his daze. “You.” He raises a hand and points a finger at Sharpy. “This drink was meant for you.”

Sharpy doesn’t seem intimidated by the huge D-man who’s pointing at his face. “Not my fault I duck better than you,” he says easily.

“Some might say it was your fault he was up there in the first place,” Seabs says, squinting at the side of Duncs’ head and then pulling a wedge of lemon out of his hair.

“Just getting him to make the most of his last soulmate-free week,” Sharpy says.

“Yeah, seems like that was super enjoyable,” Jonny grumbles into his drink.

He’s been doing that all night—grumbling and looking into his drink—and Patrick is bummed about it, because he’s supposed to be getting to know Carly.

Fortunately, Patrick knows how to get a party started. “You know what we need?” he says. “Shots.”

Sharpy and Duncs and Seabs are fully on board, but Jonny just stands up. “You know, I’m kind of tired,” he says. “Think I’m going to head home.”

Patrick looks up at him in surprise, but yeah, he does look tired. Maybe the game wiped him out more than usual. “Yeah, okay,” he says, and Jonny tips his head to everyone and goes out.

Carly twists Patrick’s wrist to see his watch. “Oh wow, is it that late already?” She makes an apologetic face at Patrick. “I hate to do this, but I have a nine o’clock class tomorrow.”

“Oh, yeah, of course,” Patrick says. They’ve only been dating a week and he knows the team can be a lot, so he’s going to give her the easy out. But she squeezes his hand and holds on as she gets up, so he guesses that means he’s leaving with her. He shrugs and gives an apologetic wave to the others (especially Duncs, who looks nervous about losing some of his Sharpy buffer).

Carly walks close to him as they leave the bar, where it turns out Jonny’s waiting for a cab. “Oh, hey,” Jonny says, not sounding all that thrilled to see them.

Patrick frowns at him, because come on, is that any kind of greeting for Patrick and his lady? Granted, Jonny’s usually kind of monotone and, well, serious, but Patrick knows his various monotones, and this isn’t one of the good ones.

“Hey, Jonny,” Carly says. “Nice goal tonight.”

Jonny just makes a sort of twisty face at that. “Thanks. You a fan?”

“Just getting into it,” she says with a fond smile for Patrick. “Never watched it growing up, but Patrick’s been teaching me.”

That just makes Jonny’s face twistier, and, okay, this is going to be seriously not cool pretty soon. Jonny’s probably Patrick’s best friend in the world, definitely the person he spends the most time with, and he should at least try to like the girl Patrick’s seeing. Especially if she’s…well, whatever. “Yeah, she learns fast,” Patrick says. “Gonna have her on skates soon.”

“Good luck with that,” Jonny says, which would be a nice statement from some people but is definitely skeptical and judgy coming from Jonny at the moment.

It’s probably a good thing that their cabs come then, because Patrick’s fighting down the urge to call him on it. And Jonny and Patrick’s particular brand of fighting might not be something he wants to expose Carly to until she’s been around for at least a few more weeks.

It’s easy to forget about it, anyway, when Carly pulls him into the cab and leans over to whisper hot in his ear. “I don’t really have a class in the morning,” she says. “I just thought maybe we could do some stuff you wouldn’t want the team to be a part of.”

Patrick grins widely in the darkness of the cab as he leans over to kiss her. He knew he liked this girl.


	3. Chapter 3

They don’t have sex that night, but Carly does go down on him, which Patrick’s sisters have told him counts as sex. He eats her out afterward, and she comes around his tongue, all fluttering walls and high-pitched moans.

It’s better than most of his random hookups have been. It makes him hopeful that if his first time with her can be this good, it will probably only get better. One more thing that’s not going to keep her from being the one.

His mom calls him on Saturday. Patrick’s happy to hear from her; between Carly and all the games he’s had this week, he hasn’t talked to her in a while, and he doesn’t like going that long without talking to his mom.

She immediately starts in on Jess’s soulmate issues, though. And, don’t get Patrick wrong, he likes hearing about his sisters—they text and Skype a lot, but he still ends up missing out on a lot of their lives—but it always makes him feel extra bad when his mom starts talking about timer stuff. He feels like he’s letting her down.

“So now she’s saying she wants to pick a college based on where she wants to meet her soulmate,” Patrick’s mom says. “I keep trying to tell her that it doesn’t matter where she goes—her soulmate will be whoever he is; she can’t change that—but she’s convinced that if she goes somewhere in the South, she’ll end up with someone who wants to live in Georgia all his days.”

Patrick gives a laugh that’s only a little forced. Jess has always been a little ridiculous, and half the time she says stuff she doesn’t mean just to get a reaction. It usually works, with their mom.

“And how are things with you?” she asks, in the cautious tone that means she’s really asking about his timer.

“Okay.” He hesitates for a moment before saying, “I met someone, actually.” He’s not totally sure he wants her to know that—he doesn’t want to get anyone else’s hopes up, when he’s already having enough trouble with his own—but he also hates keeping things from his mom.

“You did?” He can practically hear her straighten up and sharpen her focus. “No timer?”

Patrick rolls his eyes. “Why do people keep asking me that? I’m not a masochist.”

“Well,” she says, “I certainly don’t need to know about _that_ part of your life.”

Patrick sputters. “Mom!”

“Really, though,” she says while Patrick’s getting over the shock of having his mom hint at anything related to his sex life. “Is she going to get one?”

“I don’t know,” Patrick says, because he hopes so, but it’s still too soon to ask. “We haven’t talked about it yet.”

“I just don’t want to see you get hurt again,” she said. “Not like with Katie, or Alexa, or Brigid…”

He closes his eyes. “Me neither. Believe me.”

***

Carly stays over again on Saturday night, and this time they do have sex. It’s—still good. Patrick doesn’t feel like they’ve quite hit their rhythm yet, but there’s time for that. The potential is there, he thinks.

All in all, he’s feeling pretty good when he gets to practice on Sunday morning. He grins at Jonny as he drops down next to him.

“What, remembered I’m here, did you?” Jonny says.

The grin falls off Patrick’s face. “Huh?”

Jonny looks away. “Nothing.” He kicks at the leg of the bench. “Forget I said anything.”

Like Patrick’s about to, when Jonny’s said something like that. Fortunately, he knows how to get Jonny to talk. He stares at Jonny with his most annoying look on his face until Jonny huffs out a breath.

“It’s just—you’ve been practically glued to Carly this week,” Jonny mumbles. “But that’s a good thing. I’m just—kind of tired. Forget it.”

Patrick didn’t realize he was neglecting his other people enough to make them annoyed. He’s never wanted to be the kind of person who does that. “Sorry, man,” he says, and Jonny gets the kind of mutinous expression that means any further attempt to discuss it will only lead to a shouting match. “At least you’re not Duncs,” Patrick says instead.

Duncs is across the locker room in a huddle with Seabs, who seems to be reassuring him. Three guesses about what, Patrick thinks, and the first two don’t count.

“Two days, huh?” Jonny says.

“Yeah,” Patrick says. They sit in silence for a minute until Patrick punches Jonny in the leg. “Breakfast tomorrow?”

Jonny’s face scrunches up like he wants to say no. “Yeah, okay,” he says.

***

Patrick’s still determined not to talk to Carly about the timer thing yet. He really wants to—hates the uncertainty; just wants to know—but it’s still too early. Three weeks, at least, before he has that conversation.

Then Duncs’ timer zeroes out.

Obviously, they all see it coming. Seabs is the one who organizes the stag night party—Sharpy wanted to do it, but Seabs put his foot down in a heated locker room discussion that ended with Sharpy sulking all through practice.

It’s a good thing. The party includes enough stag night traditions that it’s a pretty wild scene anyway, and Patrick can’t even imagine what would have happened if Sharpy had been in charge. Strippers, probably. Hookers, not out of the question.

As it is, they go to a club and get drunk enough that they all have trouble standing up straight. Some of Duncs’ friends from back home have come to Chicago for the occasion, and they seem even more intent on getting Duncs to do shots than Sharpy is.

“What if she comes in and sees me like this?” Duncs asks, looking ridiculous in the princess crown Sharpy brought and Seabs didn’t stand in the way of.

“That’s the whole point, dude,” Sharpy says. “You won’t meet her until tomorrow. You can do whatever you want tonight.”

It’s pretty obvious what they’re celebrating, with the crown and the gag gifts of handcuffs and timer covers and women’s lingerie, so it doesn’t take too long for the women in the bar to come over and start giving Duncs his celebratory kisses. Most of them go with the cheek, but a few of the bolder (or drunker) ones plant them on his mouth. Duncs starts to look pretty dazed as the night goes on.

It’s only the women with active timers who come over. That’s a traditional thing, too: kind of a send-off from the others who still have their timers running. Patrick catches himself keeping an automatic lookout for women without timers, even though he wouldn’t act on it right now, what with Carly.

He gets epically drunk instead, joining in on the cheering when they do a champagne toast at midnight. Jonny opens the bottle of champagne because he declares that he doesn’t trust anyone else, but he’s so drunk that he almost shoots the cork into Hossa’s eye. He’s still apologizing as everyone finishes their countdown and Patrick sees Dunc’s timer switch over from one to zero.

It looks so tidy: that whole long row of zeroes, blinking. The only way for it to be tidier, Patrick thinks manically, would be if it were his own and didn’t say anything at all. He giggles at that, and maybe he sounds a little hysterical, because Bicks takes his champagne away.

Patrick snags another glass after that and keeps drinking, so it’s all okay.

***

He wakes up way too early the next morning on Sharpy’s floor, grateful that they have a day off and a little bit wondering if it’s possible to die from being too hung over. There’s a foot in his ribs, and he pushes it and hears Jonny groan from the other side of the coffee table.

Jonny raises his head. There’s still a party hat on it. “Time is it?”

“Time to go back to sleep forever,” Patrick says, and Jonny lowers his head again.

Abby comes in after not too long and lures them out with coffee. She is an evil woman for making them get up, but also wonderful, because she’s made them a breakfast of eggs and bacon that even Jonny eats without complaining about their nutrition plans.

“I remember my own stag night,” she says, like she’s way older than them instead of, like, twenty-four. Or something. “The girls took me to this bar on campus called Lolita’s, and I had to wear this ridiculous pink tutu. I haven’t been able to drink green-apple martinis ever since.”

At the moment, Patrick doesn’t think that sounds like much of a loss.

Sharpy comes in after that and slumps down in a corner of the table, nudging his head against Abby’s side until she starts petting his hair, and Seabs and Bicks come down not much later. Duncs is the last to drag in, looking about as bad as he would if all those women had been punching him instead of kissing him. He doesn’t say anything during breakfast or during the copious amounts of water and coffee he drinks, and even after all that he just raises his head suddenly, says, “Oh, God,” and stares off into space.

“There, there,” Seabs says, without moving, probably because moving would be painful right now.

They all end up draped around the living room, watching who knows what crap on TV and trying to get over their headaches. By noon, Patrick’s feeling human enough to be hungry again.

“I’m not feeding you guys breakfast and lunch,” Abby says. “You’re on your own for this one.”

There’s an epic argument about where they’re going for lunch, because Jonny wants sushi and Sharpy wants Thai, and they only eventually end up leaving because Patrick points out that the sushi and Thai places are next to each other and they can figure out which one they’re going to once they get there.

Jonny’s crabby and hilarious the entire car ride over. Sharpy’s driving Duncs and Seabs, so it’s just Patrick, Jonny, and Bicks, who doesn’t seem to find Jonny’s crabbiness as hilarious as Patrick does.

“You know,” Bicks says when Jonny’s been going on for a while about how Thai is totally unhealthy and some people have no respect for their bodies, “we could have stayed at Sharpy’s and gotten takeout from both places,” and Jonny’s face at that is so ludicrous that Patrick laughs out loud.

The upshot is that Jonny drives way too fast and gets there before Sharpy. Apparently Sharpy was almost as indifferent to the speed limit as Jonny was, though, because he pulls in a moment later.

“Ha!” Sharpy says, getting out of the car.

“I still won,” Jonny says.

“Only counts if you get there early enough to go in and get a table,” Sharpy says. “Which you did not.”

“Those are absolutely not the rules,” Jonny says, crossing his arms. “Kaner, tell him those aren’t the rules.”

And that’s when the beeping starts.

It takes a minute for Patrick to figure out where it’s coming from. Then he sees Duncs, looking utterly shell-shocked and staring down the sidewalk as his timer beeps up a storm.

There are two women coming toward them. At first Patrick can’t tell which one it is, and then one of them looks up and stares back at Duncs, and it’s obvious.

She’s gorgeous—tall, long blond hair that swishes around her upper back. But it’s the expression on her face that’s really something to look at. There’s dawning wonder there, and surprise, and even something that looks a bit scared: like she can’t quite believe that she’s seeing what she’s seeing, that it won’t go away. Like she wants to keep looking.

“Hi,” Duncs says. He seems like he’s forgotten that anyone else is there. Or maybe it’s just that nobody else matters anymore.

“Hi.” She sounds a little shy. She doesn’t take her eyes off his face, though. “Are you—”

“I’m Duncs.” He sticks out his hand, shakes his head. “I mean, Duncan. Keith. That’s me.”

She laughs a little. The way Duncan’s face changes at that laugh, you’d think she’d just played the most beautiful music ever written. “Lorelei.”

She takes his hand, and he keeps shaking it, way longer than normal.

“Um,” Sharpy says after the hand-shaking’s been going on for a minute. “We’re gonna…go get lunch, okay?”

“’Kay,” Duncs says vaguely. He doesn’t take his eyes off Lorelei, and as they all move away, Patrick can see the same little smile appear on both of their faces: small, wondrous.

He follows the others into the restaurant and pulls out his phone. He needs to see Carly.


	4. Chapter 4

Patrick and Carly had vague plans to meet up that night anyway, since the Hawks are leaving on a road trip the next day. So she has no problem meeting him for dinner.

By this point, Patrick’s feeling almost not hungover, thanks to a long shower and judicious application of Gatorade. He takes her somewhere pretty nice—he was going to go with very nice, but then he thought it might make her feel pressured. And that’s not really the vibe he wants, given what he’s going to say.

They talk about nothing much for a little while: he tells her about Duncs’ stag party, playing up the ridiculous parts, and she laughs. Then the waiter takes their orders and leaves, and Patrick takes a deep breath.

“I was wondering if we could talk about the timer thing,” he says.

She looks up, immediately alert. “Okay.”

“I, uh.” He’s had this kind of conversation so many times; you’d think he’d be good at it. But it always feels different, and he feels more hopeful this time than usual. “Can you tell me more about why you don’t have one?”

She considers for a moment. He likes that—likes that she approaches things thoughtfully—and is impatient for her to go on at the same time. “It started out as my mom’s thing,” she says. “Like I told you. She didn’t want me to go through adolescence having everything fixed. Something about…having enjoyed the open-endedness of not knowing, I guess? And wanting that for me.”

“Uh-huh.” But she’s twenty years old now, he doesn’t say.

“And then as I got a little older…I don’t know,” Carly says. “I never had one, so it didn’t seem weird to not. And,” her cheek dimples a little, “I kind of liked it.”

“Liked it?” Patrick can feel his eyebrows go up.

She looks a little abashed, but grins. “I like dating, you know? People don’t do this sort of thing if you have a timer.” She waves a hand at the restaurant, Patrick. “I like to get to meet people, get to know them. Feel that spark of possibility. I like getting wooed.”

“But…” He doesn’t want to say anything too judgmental, anything that sounds like he thinks she’s being stupid. Because he can sort of see her point. But—“But you could be with the person you love. The person you’ll be with forever.”

She nods. “Yeah. I get that. I guess I just haven’t felt ready for that, for a long time.”

Patrick nods. Tries not to panic. She hasn’t said no, yet. He hasn’t even asked.

“How about you?” she says.

He breathes for a second. He doesn’t want to sound too intense, already knows he’s going to fail. “I…really want it,” he says. “I want my timer to light up. I want that person, the one who’s going to be my person, to get her timer so that we can both know.”

She nods, silent.

Patrick looks her in the eyes. “And I would really like it,” he says, “if you would be willing to give it a try.”

She looks back at him, steady. “I think I would be up for that.”

Patrick feels his face break into a smile.

***

The problem is that Patrick’s leaving on a road trip the next morning, so they can’t go to the clinic right away like he wants. “I could just go while you’re gone,” Carly says, but Patrick doesn’t want that. He knows he’ll be going crazy, constantly wondering if she’s gone yet and if his timer should have lit up.

“I want to go with you,” he says, and she nods like she gets it.

So they make an appointment to go when he gets back. She stays over that night, and he gives her a long kiss before he leaves for the airport. If it’s her—if she gets her timer, and both of theirs start beeping—then maybe he can wake up next to her and kiss her goodbye every morning. The thought makes his stomach do funny things as he gets into the cab.

It’s just a two-night road trip, a game against the Flames, but by the middle of the first afternoon Patrick’s bouncing off the walls.

“Will you quit it?” Jonny says when they’re in their room before team dinner that first day.

Patrick looks down at where he’s tapping his foot against the floor. “Sorry. Didn’t notice.”

“Geez, what’s up with you?” Jonny asks.

Patrick shrugs. “Just antsy, I guess.”

Jonny looks like he wants to ask more, but he doesn’t.

They go down to team dinner, and Patrick’s no better. He’s loud and laughs a lot and is generally himself but turned up to eleven. They go out after, even though the next day’s a game day so no one has much to drink. That doesn’t keep Patrick from bopping Sharpy on the head every time he turns away and then laughing.

“Okay, time for a Patrick-on-Patrick intervention,” Sharpy says finally. He puts one hand on each of Patrick’s shoulders and holds him down in his seat. “You’re staying like this until you tell me what the fuck is going on with you.”

Patrick squirms, but Sharpy has all the leverage. “Okay, fine,” he says. “Carly’s getting a timer when we get back.”

He sees Jonny’s head snap up.

“Dude, that’s awesome!” Duncs says. He’s still on his first beer, but he sounds enthusiastic enough to be at least four in. “Timers are the best.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Seabs says fondly. “Don’t go flaunting your new love in our faces.”

“Are you sure it’s a good idea?” Jonny asks, and everyone goes a little still.

“Um, yeah,” Patrick says. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Well.” Jonny shrugs. “What if you’re not a match?”

Patrick stares at him. “Then, obviously I’d want to know that. That’s the whole point of the timer.”

“It’s just,” Jonny leans forward, elbows on the table, “what if you could have been really great together? And then you get the timer, and you don’t match? It’ll be ruined.”

Wow, Patrick so doesn’t need this right now. “Then it should be ruined,” he says, “because she’s obviously not the one for me.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Look, what would you know about it?” Patrick says. “Just because you have to go the next fifteen years or whatever without anyone who loves you—”

He knows he’s crossed a line as soon as he says it. Even if he didn’t, Sharpy’s intake of breath and the look on Jonny’s face would have told him as much.

Jonny shoves his chair back from the table and walks out.

There’s silence at the table after he leaves. “Think I should, uh, go after him?” Patrick asks after a while.

“Better give him a few minutes to calm down,” Seabs says.

The others aren’t acting mad at Patrick, exactly, but the atmosphere at the table is a little stiff, so Patrick leaves the bar anyway and calls Carly in the lobby. He doesn’t tell her about the conversation he had with Jonny; instead he listens to her tell him all about her classes that day and how she has way too much work due next week and what a dick one of the students had been to the TA. By the time they’re done talking, Patrick feels a little better, but there’s still a big knot of tension in his gut from the fight with Jonny.

He goes back to the room. Jonny’s stretched out on the bed—the one farthest from the door, the one Patrick usually takes—just lying there, not watching TV or anything. He doesn’t look up when Patrick comes in.

“I’m really sorry,” Patrick says as he sits down on the other bed. Somehow this doesn’t seem like the time to fight about bed rights.

“Yeah?” Jonny doesn’t sound at all ready to forgive, but he answered, which is something.

“I shouldn’t have said that you didn’t know anything about timers,” Patrick says. “Not buddies, man.”

Patrick can see Jonny’s mask of indifference crack a little at the expression, which Jonny usually finds ridiculous and pretends not to be amused by. “Yeah,” he says. “You shouldn’t have.”

It’s a little more conciliatory. Patrick lets the silence lie there for a minute. “It just sucks, you know?” he says finally.

Jonny sighs, quick and sharp enough that Patrick thinks he really does know. “Yeah. It really does.”

Patrick gets ready for bed, and they don’t say anything else that night.

***

They lose to the Flames. Patrick cares, but not as much as he would if he didn’t have a major distraction looming.

They get back the next afternoon, but Carly has class that night, so Patrick doesn’t see her until the next day. He goes over to her apartment at one, after practice is over.

She answers the door and gives him a kiss by way of a greeting. She’s wearing a sweater dress, nothing fancy, but like she made an effort. Patrick’s glad he wore slacks and a button down.

“Ready for this?” he asks.

She laughs. “Like a pinprick, right?”

Actually, Patrick remembers crying a little when they put his timer in when he was fourteen, but that’s not the real thing to worry about, and they both know it.

They go to the TiMER clinic downtown. The receptionist raises her eyebrow at Patrick when they come in. He hasn’t been here _that_ often over the past couple of years—not that many timerless girls to date, after all—but he guesses he’s a little more recognizable than most of the clinic’s clientele. He flushes under her gaze.

“Hi,” Carly says. “I’m here for my timer.”

They get shown into a little room, all sterile-looking and professional. Carly sits on a medical table, even though they’ll only be looking at her wrist. She’s jittery, a little. Patrick wants to help her calm down, but he’s feeling at least as bad himself.

She takes his hand and squeezes. “We’ll know soon, won’t we?”

Patrick wishes he could say it’ll be okay no matter what happens, but he can’t find the words. He just squeezes back.

A doctor comes in after a bit, maybe in her forties, lots of curly red hair pinned back. “Carly Thompson,” she says. “Never had a timer before?”

“No, ma’am,” Carly says, and Patrick smirks at her for the “ma’am.” She rolls her eyes at him.

“That’s good. Can’t put one in again after it’s been taken out, you know.” She consults the form Carly had to fill out. “No known neurological conditions?”

There are some more questions like that, and then the doctor opens the sterile container that the timer comes in. They make sure the TiMER insertions are done by doctors in case of complications, but the actual insertion process is automated. Patrick’s seen it before, from both sides. They put the timer in a machine like a big nail gun, strap it to your wrist, and then pull the trigger.

“Ready?” the doctor asks, poised above Carly’s wrist with the big nail gun thing.

Carly takes a deep breath and darts her eyes to Patrick’s. They’re bright with—hope? nerves?—and he gives her a smile back. She looks at the doctor and nods.

The doctor attaches the machine to her wrist. There’s a _ka-chunk,_ and Carly’s other hand clamps down on Patrick’s. A couple of tears squeeze out from under her eyelids.

The doctor takes the machine away. Beneath it, Carly’s wrist is as good as new, except that now there’s a timer on it, a shiny oblong of plastic.

It always takes a minute for the timer to connect to the nervous system. Patrick watches it and tries not to hope. There are sometimes complications—one person in a million has a weird neurological reaction, and sometimes there’s a seizure—and Patrick knows that’s what he should be worried about, instead of what the timer says. But he’s not. He’s not.

If it says the right thing, then he could walk out of here with a soulmate.

The screen of the timer lights up. Slowly, numbers appear. Patrick’s having a hard time seeing the screen clearly, all of a sudden, but he can see enough. Enough to know that it’s numbers. Not zeroes.

Not beeping.

Not Patrick’s.

“A year and nine months,” Carly whispers. Her eyes are fixed on her wrist. “I’ll just have graduated college. I’ll meet him just when I’m starting out…”

Patrick lets go of her hand and takes a fumbling step back.

She remembers herself then, because apparently there was a reason he liked her in the first place. She looks up at him. “Patrick, I’m sorry.”

He’s heard that so many times over the years. They always start with his name. Why do they always start with his name?

She reaches out a hand to him. “I know you wanted…”

He’s not going to cry. He’s _not._ “It’s okay.”

“Well.” The doctor picks up her folder. “I’ll leave you to it then, shall I?”

Patrick wonders how many people she sees come in here in pairs, full of hope. He wonders how the other rejected partners react. If some of them find it easier to stand here, after.

The door closes behind the doctor. The room is silent.

Patrick’s eyes are stuck around his feet. He can’t seem to look up.

“I know this isn’t what you wanted,” Carly says after a long pause. “But if you want to still—”

“No,” Patrick says, a little too quickly. He finally manages to look at her, though things are a little blurry. He tries for a smile. “I’m gonna head out, okay?”

She bites her lip. “Patrick…”

“Good luck,” he says, and leaves.

***

He goes to Jonny’s.

Jonny opens the door when he knocks, and Patrick must look terrible, because Jonny lets him in without chirping him for showing up uninvited or doing the whole routine where he might have had other plans. As if Jonny ever has other plans.

“Carly got her timer today,” Patrick says.

“Oh.” Jonny closes the door behind them and stands there awkwardly, because he is sort of a Canadian hockey robot. Patrick isn’t, like, crying or anything, but he won’t vouch for the redness of his eyes at the moment. He can’t blame Jonny for being freaked out.

“Um,” Jonny says. “Video games?”

“Definitely.” Patrick leads the way to the couch.

It turns out he’s terrible at video games right now, though, and after the third time Jonny creams him at MarioKart, Jonny hits pause on the system. That’s major, because Jonny never passes up the chance to beat anyone. Not to mention the chance to gloat about it.

It’s quiet in the room without the video game music. Patrick drops his controller and rests his chin on a couch pillow. “I just really hoped she’d be the one, you know?”

“Yeah,” Jonny says. It seems to be the extent of his comforting vocabulary, but that’s okay. Patrick would rather lie here in pathetic misery with Jonny than alone.

They sit there for about five minutes before Jonny stands up. “Okay, we’re going about this all wrong,” he says in his voice that’s probably supposed to be commanding but mostly just sounds angry. “Vodka or gin?”

Patrick goes for the vodka, and they proceed to get drunk on whatever cheap stuff Jonny last picked up at the liquor store, because he’s a cheapskate and wouldn’t know quality alcohol if it bit him on the ass. Patrick can feel the alcohol weighing down his limbs against the couch, and everything feels sort of heavy.

“It’s like there’s a wall,” Patrick says. He’s not slurring his speech, so he’s probably not drunk enough yet. But…yeah.

Jonny looks up blearily from where he’s lying on the couch, head by Patrick’s knee. “A wall?”

“Yeah. You know. Like, there’s all this stuff I want to do.” Patrick balances the bottle on his stomach. “Not even big stuff, just the stupid little stuff, you know? But I can’t do it, because the right person isn’t there to do it with. It’s like I’m on the wrong side of this wall, and there’s supposed to be a door, but there isn’t one.”

“I get that,” Jonny says, and holds out his wrist with its gleaming timer.

“Shit, I know.” Patrick takes another slug of vodka. He lets the burn spread through his chest in silence. “I think maybe I’m done for a while,” he says finally.

“Done?”

“With dating. Not forever. I just…don’t want to go back to that room, you know? The clinic room. With the timers.”

Jonny makes an _mm_ sound.

Carly’s face, looking so hopeful. Just like Katie’s, and Alexa’s, and Brigid’s, and Lauren’s. The doctor watching him. Patrick just wanting to get out of there before they can hurt him any more.

“You could start a movement,” Jonny says. He’s mumbling a little. “Go around and convince timerless women to get them installed. Spread timers throughout the masses.”

Patrick gives a short laugh. “Fuck, no, man. Just be giving myself more opportunities to be rejected. I don’t need that.” He takes another drink. “Besides, you don’t even believe in timers.”

“You do, though,” Jonny says, tilting his head back to look at Patrick upside down. “And I don’t…not believe in them. They just seem to make a lot of people unhappy.”

“Until they don’t,” Patrick says, thinking of Duncs.

“Until they don’t.” Jonny runs his fingers over his own wrist.

Fuck, Jonny will be really happy with his person one day. It’s a guarantee, right there on his wrist. Patrick wants that guarantee so badly he aches. He takes another big swig.

“Hey, what’s it like, dating?” Jonny asks.

“Huh?” The room is starting to be a little spinny now.

“Well, I can’t, you know.” Jonny lets his timer arm drop off the couch. “Date. So I was just wondering what it’s like.”

Patrick laughs. “Honestly? It kind of sucks.”

Jonny looks up in surprise. “Really?”

“Well, not all of it,” Patrick says. “You go to nice places, I guess, and the sex doesn’t suck. But I’m doing it all with this woman I just met, and I don’t really want to be spending time with her, you know? I’d rather be with you guys. The team. People I know.”

“Huh.” Jonny crosses his hands over his stomach. “I guess I always thought you enjoyed it. You’re always talking to them, at bars and stuff. The women.”

“Only ‘cause it’s the only way.” Patrick gulps some more vodka and wraps his right hand around his left wrist, thumb over the timer. Fuck it. Fuck it for getting his hopes up so often and never, ever giving him anything in return. Fuck it for bringing him to that little room where he had to watch other people find out about their soulmates and leave him behind. He’s so done.

“Maybe I could find someone to date me,” Jonny says, voice slurred and kind of quiet.

“Oh God. No.” Patrick tries to sit up, though he tips over a little. “Weren’t you listening? Sucks. Don’t do that to yourself.”

“No, I know.” Jonny tucks his hands together over his stomach. He seems smaller like this, or maybe it’s the way Patrick’s tipping off the couch. “I just…think it would be fun. Just once.”

Patrick laughs. He can hear how bitter it sounds, even though the haze of alcohol. “You don’t want that. Trust me. You don’t…you don’t want to end up where I am.”

“I don’t think that I’d—“

“You don’t get it.” Patrick lets more vodka run down his throat. “It’s…you want to go to a nice restaurant or something? I’ll go with you.” He gestures at Jonny with the bottle. “We can even call it a date. But don’t…yeah. Don’t.”

Jonny makes a face at him and reaches for the vodka. “Okay, I think someone’s had enough to drink.”

Patrick slumps back into the couch and cradles the bottle to his chest protectively. “Just sucks,” he mumbles into the bottle neck.

Jonny leans forward and gets his hand on the bottle. This time Patrick lets him take it. The world is tilting enough anyway.


	5. Chapter 5

Patrick wakes up in Jonny’s guest room the next morning with a headache the size of the UC. He groans and buries his head in the pillows. He’s not sure how much he had to drink last night—it’s all kind of fuzzy—but—

No. Oh no. Did he really…?

Jonny’s already in the kitchen, wincing over a frying pan of eggs. Patrick goes straight up to him. “Dude, I am so sorry.”

Jonny raises an eyebrow, even though it looks like all movements pain him right now. “For being a drunken idiot, Kaner? Pretty sure I’m used to that by now.”

“Fuck you,” Patrick says automatically, then remembers he’s supposed to be apologizing. “But, uh, really. Last night, I think I might have, um…”

“Drunk all my vodka? Passed out on my couch? Offered to date me?”

“Yeah,” Patrick says weakly. “That.”

Jonny rolls his eyes. “Like you haven’t done way worse before.”

It’s a fair point. Patrick should probably count his blessings. He slumps against the counter. “It’s just…every fucking time, you know?”

“I know.” Jonny slides a plate of eggs over to him. “Eat your eggs.”

Patrick eats his eggs.

***

When he gets to practice later that day, it’s pretty clear all the guys know about Carly. No one says anything, but a lot of people slap him on the back sympathetically, and Sharpy pulls him into a hug and won’t let him go for at least thirty seconds, even when Patrick protests that he doesn’t have any air.

“You wouldn’t be talking if you didn’t have air,” Sharpy points out when he lets go, ruffling Patrick’s hair.

So yeah, Patrick’s pretty sure Jonny spread the word and told them not to say anything directly. He’s really grateful, almost pathetically so, because telling people about the breakup is always the absolute worst part. Especially when it has to take the form of, “Yeah, turns out she has another soulmate out there waiting, lucky for her, right?”

Practice goes by without any hangover-related disasters on Patrick’s part, thank you very much, and he’s looking forward to a quiet rest of the day at home when Duncs announces in the locker room after that they’re all going out tonight.

“I really want you all to meet her,” he says with this stupid adorable glow-y expression on his face, and no one needs to ask who.

It’s exactly the opposite of what Patrick wants—what he wants is to flop on the couch with some terrible food he’s not supposed to eat and some equally terrible movies, or maybe some equally terrible porn, and wallow for a while. Well, actually what he wants right now is for his timer to light up. But if he can’t have that, he can at least hold onto some self-pity.

Duncs corners him as he’s leaving, though, and claps a hand to his back. “You’ll be there, right, man? You’re going to love her.”

Patrick’s about to say no. He’d be totally justified in it. But the way Duncs is looking at him, the elation in his face, Patrick can’t bear to turn him down. “Sure. I’ll be there.”

***

It’s just as bad as Patrick imagined.

Everyone’s sitting at a table with Lorelei, who is, in fact, awesome. She’s bantering with the guys and being a little shy and giggly, and she keeps shooting Duncs these looks that make Patrick’s stomach twist.

Could happen any day, Patrick reminds himself. But when he looks down at the blank screen of his timer, it’s really hard to believe it.

To make things worse, Jonny’s being weird, avoiding Patrick and ignoring all of Patrick’s best efforts to make _share my misery_ faces at him from across the table. That’s, like, Jonny’s whole purpose at these gatherings. Sort of. Well, not really at all. But still, he’s being weird.

It takes two beers’ worth of annoyance before Patrick cracks and goes to sit next to him. “So, how about those Blackhawks?”

Jonny looks up at him. “Har-de-fucking-har har.”

“No, but seriously,” Patrick says. “What’s up with you?”

“Nothing,” Jonny picks at the edge of the table.

“Sure,” Patrick says. “And the Oilers will win the Cup this year.”

He knows it’s something major when Jonny doesn’t respond to that, just picks up his beer glass, rolls it between his hands. He’s quiet for a minute, and then he says, “Did you mean it last night?”

“Um.” Patrick said a lot of things last night, most of which he did, in fact, mean but does not want dragged out into the light of day. And some of which he probably doesn’t remember. “Which part?”

“I just.” Jonny’s having trouble getting words out, which isn’t usual for him. “I thought it might actually be cool, you know? Going on a date.”

Patrick barely manages to hold back a snort. “Seriously?”

“Well, I can’t date anyone else, right? And—stop laughing, Patrick, I know it’s dumb, okay?” Jonny’s giving him the murder eyes now. “At least you can look for your person. I can’t do anything.”

That’s sobering. Patrick really, really doesn’t want to look for his person right now. But even if he envies Jonny’s certainty, he can admit that fourteen years and change is a really long time. “Yeah, I get that. Sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter all that much,” Jonny says. He digs a nail into a flaw in the table edge. “I just was thinking it might be kind of interesting. You know, just…flowers. Candles. Going out with someone. I want to know what it’s like.”

Patrick bites back a grin. “You’re aware that dates don’t actually take place in romantic comedies, right?”

Jonny’s digging into the edge of the table again. “I know that.”

Patrick watches him carve a new mark into the table with practically nonexistent nails. “Yeah, okay, we can do that.”

Jonny looks up at him, quick, skeptical. “Really?”

“Sure, if you want.”

The skeptical look turns into a glare. “Well, don’t do me any favors.”

Patrick laughs. He obviously is doing Jonny a favor, but whatever. “Hey, it’s not like I don’t spend enough time in your presence already, right? I can take you on a fucking date without it killing me, I’m pretty sure.”

“Okay.” Jonny jabs at the table. “Well. Good, then.”

Patrick laughs some more. “Man, whoever your person turns out to be, she’s going to be a saint.”

***

It’s kind of ridiculous. But honestly, Patrick’s kind of happy about it. He could use a little ridiculousness in his life at the moment.

He doesn’t remember what exactly he promised Jonny the first time around, due to the whole so-epically-drunk-he-brought-it-up-in-the-first-place thing. But Jonny’s after classic date stuff. Patrick knows how to do this. Hell, it’s one of the few non-hockey things he actually has useful experience in.

“What are you wearing?” he asks when Jonny picks up the phone the next morning.

“Um, a t-shirt and shorts,” Jonny says. “What, are we having phone sex now?”

Patrick rolls his eyes. “No, idiot, on our date. Tomorrow.”

“You haven’t asked me out yet,” Jonny says.

Patrick sighs. Honestly, how he puts up with this guy. “Fine. Jonny, would you go out with me tomorrow night?”

Jonny hmms. “I don’t know. That’s not a very romantic invitation.”

“Ugh,” Patrick says. “Okay, how’s this?” He puts on a fake high voice. “Oh, Jonny-boo, you’re the moon to my stars, I just _die_ when you’re not with me, please make my life complete and come to fucking dinner with me tomorrow?”

A pause. “Better,” Jonny says. “I guess I can be there.”

“Fucking right. Now what are you wearing?”

“Gray slacks and a blue shirt,” Jonny answers promptly. Then, “Wait, why?”

“No reason,” Patrick says, and hangs up. He’s got some ordering to do.

***

Patrick’s outside Jonny’s door at precisely seven o’clock the next night. Jonny opens the door, surveys him for a moment, and then says, “No.”

“I haven’t asked you anything yet,” Patrick says.

“You’re going to ask me to put that on my wrist,” Jonny says, “and the answer is no.”

Patrick waves the white corsage in the air. “Don’t be stupid. This is the kind you pin on your chest.”

Jonny gives him the glare he usually reserves for faceoffs. “No.”

“Fine.” Patrick pouts. “We’ll find something else to do with it.”

Jonny looks really wary about that, but he doesn’t ask. He also lets Patrick stand back and let him go first into the elevator. Patrick grins behind his back. This is going to be fun.

***

Patrick maybe hasn’t dated as many people as he would have liked to, these past few years, but his game is solid.

Jonny makes a face when he sees the restaurant. “We’re eating here?”

“Only the best for you.” Lia’s isn’t the most expensive restaurant in Chicago—though it’s not far off—but it’s the one with the most romantic atmosphere. Not to mention the best lakeview seating.

Patrick gets the door for Jonny, who only grumbles a little about that, and gives the maitre d’ his name for the reservation. They’re about to follow him back—Jonny first, of course—when Patrick stops him.

“What?” Jonny says, but Patrick’s already going toward the youngish couple that’s just entered the restaurant.

“Excuse me,” he says to the woman. “I was wondering if you might like to wear this? I think it would look fantastic with your dress.”

He holds out the corsage. The woman giggles and hesitates a little, but takes it. Patrick drops a wink at the man with her and turns back to find Jonny looking at him.

“What?”

Jonny shakes his head. “I can’t believe you just winked.”

Patrick laughs. “Just showing off for my date,” he says, and Jonny makes a scrunchy face.

“If you gentlemen would follow me,” says the maitre d’. Patrick feels kind of bad for making him wait, so they hurry up.

They still get an awesome table, though: right in the window by the water, like Patrick requested. He pulls out Jonny’s chair for him. Jonny goes to the other one automatically, but Patrick gives him a significant glance and tilts his head down to the chair that’s pulled out in front of him. Jonny rolls his eyes and goes to it.

“It’s not a bro dinner, man,” Patrick says as he goes to the other chair.

“Right.” Jonny looks out over the water. Patrick gave him the better view, obviously. “This…is nice.”

“Try not to sound so surprised,” Patrick says. “This is what it’s like when I date someone. Well, okay, I don’t usually go for Lia’s on the first night. But you wanted the full experience, so you’ve got it.”

The waiter shows up with menus then, and when he leaves, Jonny says, “So you’ve been here before?”

“Yeah, of course,” Patrick says.

“What, uh…” Jonny swallows. “What do you usually talk about?”

Jonny’s nervous, Patrick realizes. The realization makes him smirk. “Oh, you know. High-class intellectual things. Foreign films. Philosophy.”

Jonny looks confused for about half a second, and Patrick laughs loud enough that a few people at nearby tables shoot him dirty looks.

“Whatever we want to talk about, man, what do you think?” Patrick says.

It gets a little more normal after that. It’s not like Patrick doesn’t know how to talk to Jonny, after all, especially when Jonny’s not being a nervous freak about the whole date thing. They get into a vicious argument about whether sun-dried tomatoes count as a vegetable—“They so do not, Patrick, I’ll call the trainers right now”—and maybe that’s not exactly Patrick’s typical first-date conversation, but it’s Jonny, so Patrick’s not surprised.

Jonny breaks off halfway through his salmon and a detailed description of why they shouldn’t have let the ‘Canes beat them last week to say, “Wait. Is this a normal date conversation?”

Patrick shrugs. “Like I said. There’s no such thing as normal date conversation, dude. What, you think like there’s a script?”

“No, but just.” Jonny shrugs, looking embarrassed. “I want it to be real.”

“Okay.” Patrick puts down his steak knife and leans forward. “Tell me about your family.”

The look Jonny gives him is deeply unimpressed. “You already know about my family.”

“Exactly,” Patrick says. “You wanna pretend we’re strangers?”

“I guess not,” Jonny says.

“Right. So tell me more about the ‘Canes.”

Jonny’s eyes rekindle. “Their defense was the _worst,”_ he says, and there, they’re back.

***

Overall, it’s a pretty great dinner, but Patrick wasn’t expecting anything less. He’s had dinner with Jonny like a million times, and usually the food isn’t even this good.

Because Patrick is the master of these things, he gets the check while Jonny’s in the bathroom. Jonny comes back to the table to find Patrick signing the receipt, and his eyes narrow.

“We were supposed to fight over it,” he says.

“You were going to lose, anyway,” Patrick says.

“No.” Jonny’s chin juts out. “I’m way better at faceoffs than you.”

“Yeah, but it’s my date.” Patrick smirks. “You think it was an accident it came while you were in the bathroom?”

Jonny looks outraged, so Patrick figures he wins.

“Okay, but I get to pick what we do next,” Jonny says as they leave the restaurant.

“Like fuck you do,” Patrick says. “You want to pick what happens, get your own date.”

As soon as he says it, he knows it was the wrong thing to say. Jonny’s face falls, and Patrick remembers: that they’re only doing this because Jonny _can’t_ get his own date. Not for another fourteen years or so.

“Sorry,” Patrick says quietly. “You can pick if you want.”

“No.” Jonny shoves his hands in the pockets of his coat. “What were you thinking?”

“Lakefront walk.”

It sounded better in his head, and also it’s December, but Jonny just nods. “Let’s do it.”

At first Jonny’s all awkward and quiet as they walk, and it’s totally Patrick’s fault for being a tool, so he tries to fix it by making Jonny get judgy about people’s boats. It works, of course. If there’s anything Jonny loves, it’s being judgy.

“I just don’t get why you’d even buy something that’s going to fall apart five years from now,” Jonny says, waving his arms around as they pass a marina.

Patrick ducks one of his waving hands. “Dude, chill out, you’re scaring the children.”

Jonny looks around. “There aren’t any children.”

“Hypothetical children,” Patrick says. “Theoretical children.” Jonny still looks confused, so he goes with, “Don’t hit me in the face.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

It’s kind of gorgeous out, even if it is freezing enough that Patrick wants to die a little by the time they’ve been walking for ten minutes. If this were a real date, he’d be trying to figure out when was a good time to hold the girl’s hand, and if she’d be offended if he didn’t pull her onto one of the docks and kiss her.

“I don’t know why you’re jealous of dating,” Patrick says. “It really is the worst.”

Jonny looks suddenly concerned. “Is this the worst?”

“Nah, you’re fine.” Patrick waves a hand. “But real dating. You put so much time into it, and it’s so unlikely to lead anywhere, you know?”

“Good thing you’re giving it up, then.”

Patrick gets a pinched feeling in his stomach. “Yeah.”

They turn around, because Patrick’s stopped being able to feel his ears, and it’s December in Chicago, after all. They walk in silence for a few minutes before Patrick gets brave enough to say the thing that’s been hovering on the edge of his mind for the past few days.

“What if my person is already with someone,” he says, “and she doesn’t get a timer ever?”

Jonny doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then he slings an arm around Patrick’s shoulders, and they walk like that back to the car.

Patrick’s glad of the warmth.

***

He drives Jonny home, of course. “Is this the part where I invite you up for a cup of coffee?” Jonny asks with quirking lips.

“Nah, this is the part where I walk you to your door and am totally respectful of your virtue,” Patrick says.

Jonny levels a glance at him. “My door is right there. You can see it.”

“No, man, your apartment door.” Patrick parks the car. “Come on, this is a _date.”_

“Right, right,” Jonny grumbles. “I asked for it.”

“Knew you’d be high maintenance. Stay,” Patrick adds, and goes around the side of the car to open the door for him, while Jonny makes long-suffering faces at the windshield.

Patrick makes a point of walking him straight to his door, ignoring Jonny when he says things like, “It’s right there, I think I’ll make it alive.” Jonny kind of tenses up when they get there, and Patrick’s confused about why, until Jonny says, “You’re not giving me a good-night kiss, are you?”

Patrick laughs. “Shit, I forgot.”

Jonny rolls his eyes. “Patrick—”

“No, no, I wouldn’t do that to you.” Patrick’s still kind of laughing, but he does rest his eyes on Jonny’s lips for a moment. He has nice lips, actually. Probably would be soft under his, and Patrick can imagine—

He realizes he’s been staring, and looks back up. Jonny’s looking at him with a dark glance that Patrick can’t quite read.

“Sorry, yeah, I’ll get out of your hair now.” Patrick slaps Jonny on the upper arm, not at all the kind of touch he was picturing a moment ago. “Good date.”

“We should do it again sometime,” Jonny says drily.

“I’ll call you!” Patrick says, walking away and trying not to read into the way his stomach jolted just then.


	6. Chapter 6

So Patrick had a weird moment where he looked at Jonny’s lips. Whatever. Weird moments happen. He probably should have expected some weirdness when he agreed to go on a date with his best bro. Like, what was he thinking?

That Jonny wasn’t someone he’d ever think about kissing, for one thing.

But it’s not like he keeps thinking about it. He did a favor for Jonny, and now it’s over, and there are other things to think about. There’s hockey, for one thing, and Christmas coming up. Patrick fucking loves Christmas. There’s not really enough time between games for it to make sense for him to fly back to Buffalo this year, but he’s going to anyway.

Jonny sits down next to him in the locker room at their next practice. “So, this dating thing. I was just wondering.”

“Yeah?” Patrick straightens up, because, fuck, what if Jonny noticed something weird at the end there? It was just a moment, but if Patrick was, like, communicating it or anything—

“Is that all it is?”

Jonny’s giving him his deeply skeptical face. The one he gives him when Patrick’s about to do a drill Jonny’s just done, the one that says, _Rise to meet that, why don’t you._

“Oh, fuck you!” Patrick says. “That was a fucking fantastic date. Don’t even front. I got you a _corsage.”_

“Which you gave to someone else.”

“Only because you wouldn’t wear it.”

“I’m just saying,” Jonny says. “A fancy dinner? That’s kind of cliché, isn’t it? Maybe I should have asked someone with more imagination.”

“Hey. I have imagination,” Patrick says. “I have imagination coming out of my ass. You want imagination? I’ll fucking show it to you.”

Jonny shrugs and gets up. “All right. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

It’s only when Jonny’s walking away that Patrick realizes he basically just agreed to take Jonny out on another date.

***

Well, it’s not like he has anything better to do. If he weren’t taking Jonny out on supremely weird not-really-dates, he’d probably just be at home crying into a bottle of something alcoholic. Which he suspects Jonny knows, and which is, in fact, probably the reason Jonny’s doing this dating thing in the first place.

Patrick spends about thirty seconds being angry at Jonny for being all sneaky and underhanded when he figures this out. Then he remembers that he kind of likes the feeling of superiority he gets when he’s figured out one of Jonny’s plans and Jonny doesn’t know it yet, so hey, he’ll play along.

If Jonny wants imaginative, though, he’ll get imaginative.

“The Nutcracker on Ice?” Jonny says when Patrick shows up at his door with the tickets.

“Featuring a star-studded cast of world-renowned figure skaters,” Patrick says.

Jonny looks at the tickets more closely. “These aren’t until tomorrow.”

“Well, yeah,” Patrick says. “But there’s a free skate after with the stars of the show, and it’s themed. You’ll need time to get a costume together, right?”

The look on Jonny’s face is worth at least ten times what Patrick paid for the tickets. Not to mention the massive favor he’ll owe Sharpy for not telling anyone when he heard Patrick ordering them at the UC.

“You would never pull this shit with a woman you were dating,” Jonny says.

“I don’t know, Jonny,” Patrick says sweetly. “Maybe you underestimate my level of imagination.”

Seriously. That face is so worth the price of admission.

“Just don’t be the sugar plum fairy,” Patrick calls as he heads down the hall. “That’s what I’m being.”

***

Jonny glares at him extra hard when Patrick picks him up the next afternoon. “I thought you said you were being the sugar plum fairy.”

“I guess the costume shop was sold out,” Patrick says, when he can finally breathe again after the five solid minutes he just spent laughing at Jonny. He’s leaning against the wall, basically incapable of supporting his own weight, but at least he didn’t pee himself. It was a near thing, when Jonny opened the door.

“I fucking hate you.” Jonny starts wiggling out of his jacket.

“Wait, what are you doing?” Patrick springs up in alarm.

“Not wearing this, for one thing.”

Fortunately, there are like a million buttons, so Patrick has time to pull Jonny’s hands away before he gets too far. “Fuck yes, you are. That thing is awesome.”

Jonny gives him a glare that could probably crack a thousand nuts. “No way am I wearing this if you’re—”

“I have a costume, too. See?” Patrick brings out the eye patch and top hat he brought, and pulls back his coat to show Jonny the fancy tail coat and vest he’s wearing. “I promise I’ll look just as ridiculous as you.” He considers. “Well. Almost.” He cracks a smile. “You just had to go all out, didn’t you?”

Jonny glares some more before stomping down the hallway, a life-size nutcracker full of rage.

As soon as Patrick’s able to stop giggling, he follows.

***

The nutcracker coat ends up over Jonny’s arm when they get to the UC. Patrick doesn’t say anything about it.

The show is actually pretty good. Patrick knows skating, but figure skating is a totally different animal. It always boggles him when he sees it. Like if a tiger were dashing around the jungle and then suddenly started to fly.

Okay, so he’s not the best at analogies. But figure skating is cool.

Jonny’s pretending he doesn’t like it, but Patrick sees through him. He knows how Jonny looks when he actually hates something, and it’s way more closed off and bored than this. This is rage, which means Jonny really wants to hate this and is intensely angered by his complete failure to do so.

“Pretty good, huh?” Patrick whispers when the actual sugar plum fairy does a triple axel. Or lutz. Patrick’s never been too clear on the difference.

“I guess,” Jonny says, like he doesn’t actually think so and is just going along. As if.

“Hey, it’s better than you could do,” Patrick says with a smirk.

Jonny shifts in his seat. “I could do that.”

“Could not.”

Jonny’s silent for a minute, probably because he could not, in fact, actually do that. “Okay, but I could do that,” he says, pointing at someone in a frilly skirt who’s doing a super-fast spin, back arched and hands doing that graceful thing where they pull in for extra speed.

Patrick has to crack up quietly so he doesn’t interrupt the performance.

Afterward, Jonny claps, like, twice as loud and fast as anyone else, and Patrick gives him a knowing smirk that Jonny pretends not to see.

After the applause is done, the announcer comes on to say that anyone who has skates or wants to rent them is welcome to come on the ice and skate with the performers. “You brought your skates, right?” Patrick asks Jonny.

“Of course,” he says, with a scornful look.

It’s kind of a madhouse down by the ice. It’s weird seeing the UC like this: crazy fans running around, not just in the stands, but on the ice. Jonny looks fairly uncomfortable with the whole thing while they’re putting on their skates on a very crowded bench, since he basically hates people. Patrick elbows him. “Don’t worry. You probably won’t knock over a little kid this time.”

Jonny snaps his head up. “That was _one time.”_

“I’m sure all the parents here will love to hear that,” Patrick says, tongue sticking out between his teeth a little.

After that, it’s a surprise that Jonny doesn’t knock Patrick over, but somehow they both end up standing on skates.

“Hang on,” Jonny says. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“Oh! Right.” Patrick strips off the jacket he had on over the tails and pulls out the top hat and eye patch. “Only if you put on yours,” he says.

Jonny grumbles but puts on the coat.

It might have been better if he hadn’t, Patrick thinks a minute or two later, because they’re way more noticeable in costume, and enough people recognize them that by the time they’re on the ice, there’s a crowd four deep of little kids who want to meet them.

“Hang on, hang on,” Patrick says. “I will definitely sign your tutu.” He crouches down next to the little girl who asked. “But after that, we’re all going to see the dancers, okay? They were really great in the show, weren’t they?”

The little girl nods. She’s maybe four and has her fingers stuck in her mouth.

“Who was your favorite?”

“Clara,” the little girl says.

“Yeah? Her tutu was almost as good as yours,” he says, and the kid beams.

He signs a few t-shirts and some hats. Next to him, he can hear Jonny talking to a kid. “It can be really hard when you’re learning. But you know what the most important thing is? Practice. Patrick and I practice almost every day.”

“Together?” the kid asks. He’s maybe six, Patrick notes as he looks up from the t-shirt he’s signing.

Jonny’s expression goes a little soft. It’s super adorable. “Yeah, buddy, together.”

Patrick puts a hand on his arm, and Jonny startles. “Hey,” Patrick says, maybe smirking a little but really not as much as he could be. Jonny should count himself lucky. “Time to move things along?” Jonny nods and rises, and Patrick claps his hands. “Hey, everyone, thanks for coming over! We’re going to go talk to the figure skaters now, but we’ll be around for a while if anyone still wants us to sign something. Who wants to come meet Clara with us?”

After that things thin out a little. A few people come up and get autographs, but they don’t get mobbed again, and they actually get to skate a little bit. They can’t get much speed in a crowd this thick, and Patrick can tell it’s bugging Jonny, even though he tries to hide it. It’s a good thing for Patrick, though, since his eye patch is totally messing up his depth perception.

“Oops, sorry,” he says the fourth time he jostles someone without meaning to.

“For heaven’s sake.” Jonny comes up and grabs his arm. “Why don’t you take that damn thing off?”

“It’s my costume,” Patrick says.

“Hey,” some kid calls out as they pass him, “you’re doing it wrong. Herr Drosselmeyer’s supposed to be holding the nutcracker.”

Patrick breaks into a grin and shakes off Jonny’s hand. He puts his own up the back of Jonny’s coat, as Jonny kind of squawks and tries to turn away, and grabs hold of the shirt underneath. “Like this?” he calls back to the kid.

The kid gives them a thumbs up.

“What the f…crap, Patrick?” Jonny asks, with a glance at all the little kids around them.

“You’re the nutcracker. I’m supposed to be holding you by the back.” Like it isn’t obvious.

Jonny cranes his head to see what Patrick’s doing. “You’re going to mess up my shirt.”

“Fine, whiner.” Patrick smoothes his hand over the small of Jonny’s back. “Better?”

Jonny doesn’t answer for a moment. “I guess,” he says finally.

Patrick leaves his hand there, mostly because it really is easier to navigate the rink with one eye if he’s holding onto Jonny. Also, it means people keep asking them to pose for pictures, which gets the vein in Jonny’s forehead twitching while he tries to smile.

“I cannot wait for these to hit Twitter,” Patrick says.

Jonny kicks a little as they pick up speed again. “How are we supposed to do anything? This rink is way too crowded.”

“Why don’t you go in the middle?” Patrick gestures at the center of the rink, where some of the performers are demonstrating moves. “You know, you can show me all those spins you know how to do.”

Jonny glares at him. “Don’t be an idiot.”

Patrick just grins and keeps skating, but a moment later someone comes up and gets between him and Jonny. He glances over, startled, to see the sugar plum fairy.

She’s even more gorgeous close up than she was in the show, blond hair piled on top of her head and gauzy pink skirt drifting around her, and she’s got her hand on Jonny’s back now and the other on his shoulder. “What’s this about you knowing the spins?”

Jonny practically jumps in the air in surprise, and she moves around in front of him, quick as anything, so that she’s skating backwards and still holding onto him. For a second Patrick feels a flare of—jealousy? That doesn’t seem quite right.

Jonny’s face goes about as red as his jacket. “Um, no,” he says. “That’s just—this idiot here. Making stuff up.”

She grins at Jonny. Damn it, she has dimples. Except—what? “I don’t know,” she says. “I bet you could pull some of it off.”

She takes him by the hand—her timer says four years and six months—and pulls him out of the wide ring of circling skaters. Patrick keeps going for a moment before he gets it together and cuts out of the line to watch them.

The fairy is showing Jonny a spin: positioning him and showing him how to angle his skates. Patrick can’t hear what she’s telling him, but Jonny tries something, pushing off a little and rotating. He looks like an awkward drunk person.

Patrick might start laughing a little. Jonny stops the spin and glares at him, and oh, Patrick knows that look: Jonny’s determined now. “Show me again,” Jonny says.

They keep at it for a few minutes until she says, “There! You’re getting it.”

Jonny looks skeptical and tries it again. Patrick is at least equally skeptical, but yeah: Jonny does have a little bit of the graceful arm effect down. It actually looks like something.

“Wow,” Patrick says, and then immediately regrets it when Jonny shoots him a startled look. He feels himself going pink. “I mean, it’s no spin-o-rama, but…”

“I think you’ve got potential,” the sugar plum fairy says.

“Yeah?” Jonny’s still all glare-y, but at himself, not at her. He’s trying to get his arm in the right position.

“I mean, maybe don’t change careers,” she says.

It’s a joke, but it makes Patrick twitchy. “Hey,” he says. “Uh, we should get out of here.”

“Oh. Sure.” Jonny drops out of his spinning pose and shakes hands with the sugar plum fairy. “Really nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.” She sparkles at him a bit.

Patrick feels off-balance as they skate away, and not just because of the eye patch. “Looking to spice up your game?” he jokes as they get off the ice.

“You never know what’ll be useful,” Jonny says. “Maybe you should learn some of it.”

“Yeah, right,” Patrick says, though maybe Jonny has a point. It couldn’t hurt, anyway. And it did look kind of pretty. But: “I’ll stick to what works, thank you.”

Jonny doesn’t say anything to that, and they head off the ice.

***

Patrick’s feeling weirdly out of sorts as they leave the rink. Maybe it’s because the fake dating thing is starting to wear thin: no matter how much he wins at creative dates with Jonny, this isn’t going to get him any closer to his timer person. To do that, he’d have to start dating timerless women again, and—yeah. This is maybe too much of a reminder of how much he should be doing that, and how little he wants to.

“You know,” he says to Jonny as they’re going into the hot chocolate parlor, “you could probably—um, no, hang on, you are not ordering the low-fat hot chocolate.”

Jonny turns away from the counter and frowns at him. “We have a nutrition plan for a reason.”

“And that’s the first rule of dating.” Patrick pauses. “Well, maybe more like the sixth or seventh rule. Deviating from the nutrition plan is mandatory.”

Jonny does not look okay with this, but Patrick anticipated that.

“I already told them what we wanted. Come on.” Patrick herds him to their table.

Their hot chocolate flight comes a few minutes later, and Jonny looks very doubtfully at it. Patrick’s glad he told them to hold the whipped cream.

“I didn’t even know hot chocolate came in flights,” Jonny says.

“Imaginative date expert.” Patrick points his thumbs at himself. “Right here.”

All the hot chocolates are pretty good, but they end up fighting over the hazelnut kind. Patrick lets Jonny have more than his fair share because he is a gentleman like that, even if Jonny claims he’s just making it even. Dating is all about compromise.

“What were you going to say before?” Jonny asks when the hazelnut is gone. “Something about what I could probably do?”

“Oh.” Right. Patrick’s not sure he wants to say it now, but he already brought it up. “Um, I was going to say. I know you think you can’t date, but you could probably find a woman with a timer to go out with you. You can’t be the only one who wants to try this, right?”

“Oh.” Jonny looks thoughtful. “Hm.”

Patrick ducks his head and sips at the white hot chocolate. It isn’t nearly as good as the hazelnut.

***

Patrick’s feeling kind of wiped the next day, so he doesn’t go out to that night when some of the guys invite him. But he does sit at home and drink. It feels like maybe he didn’t give himself time to feel crappy about that one—maybe he let Jonny distract him too easily—because he feels empty in a way he didn’t when he and Jonny got drunk that first day.

It’s not even about Carly. It’s just about—all of them. The lack of them. How he doesn’t want to go through that yet again.

Christmas is a good distraction, which is a relief because Patrick doesn’t want to become one of those people who wallows in self-pity all the time. He has a thing at the children’s hospital the weekend before Christmas, where he gets to pass out toys, and that’s always awesome. Then he goes home for, like, a day and a half and does all the family stuff with the tree and the presents and the turkey that his mom always overcooks but it’s great anyway.

“How’s Carly?” his mom asks when he’s been home for about an hour.

He doesn’t drop the casserole dish he’s drying. “Not sure.”

“Oh.” He can tell she’s trying to act casual about it but is anything but. “Are…you two not seeing each other anymore?”

Patrick shrugs and wonders if there’s a way for him to sneak out of the kitchen without answering the question. “She got a timer.”

“Oh, sweetie.” She takes the dish out of his hands and goes in for the super-duper mom hug, the one where his face is buried in her shoulder and it’s a little hard to breathe, but he lets her. And, all right, maybe he’s the one who holds on when she starts to pull away. But only because he doesn’t get to hug her often enough, okay?

His sisters are philosophical about it, later. “Screw her,” Erica says. “Doesn’t change the fact that your person is out there.”

Jess hands him a beer. “Her loss if she thinks she can do better.”

“Oh, she can totally do better,” Erica says. “But screw her anyway.”

Patrick throws a pillow at her.

Jackie sidles up to give him a hug. “She’s out there. I know she is.”

“Yeah,” Patrick says, when he can speak again without sounding choked up.

***

He heads back to Chicago way too soon and goes for a post-holidays brunch with Sharpy. They’re walking away from the brunch place when Sharpy stops by a window. “No way,” he says. “Look who it is.”

Patrick stops. It’s the place where he and Jonny came for hot chocolate after the Nutcracker, which seems like a weird coincidence until he looks through the window and sees—Jonny.

Jonny, and not alone. He’s sitting at a little table and drinking a flight of hot chocolate with none other than the sugar plum fairy.

Okay, so she’s not dressed like the sugar plum fairy right now. But that’s definitely who she is: Patrick would know those sparkly eyes anywhere. Right now they’re sparkling at Jonny across four flavors of cocoa.

Patrick takes a step back and tries to breathe.

“You okay there, Peeks?” Sharpy asks.

Of course Patrick’s okay. Why wouldn’t he be? Except for how his stomach seems to have decided to take a ride in his boots. Except for how he wants to go in there and steal their hot chocolate from them and maybe knock their table over a little bit.

The fairy says something to Jonny, and Jonny crinkles his eyes up and laughs.

“Hello? Earth to Kaner?”

Patrick shakes his head and looks away from the curve of Jonny’s mouth. “Sorry. I, uh, don’t feel too well. I think…maybe the eggs?”

Sharpy frowns, a suspicious edge to it. “Really? I feel okay.”

“Yeah,” Patrick says. “I think I’m just going to get a cab. See you later, okay?”

He’s not actually sure by what process he ends up in the cab. He’s too busy picturing the scene back in the cafe. The way they were leaning towards each other over the table. Their hands wrapped around the stupid tiny mugs of hot chocolate.

It just feels—unfair. He showed Jonny that place. He took him to the ice skating show. And now Jonny’s at the same place with a woman from the show and sure, Patrick suggested it, but it feels like Jonny stole something from him. He doesn’t know what, but it’s just unfair, okay?

Or—or stupid. That’s what it is. Dating a woman with a timer is a really stupid idea. Patrick should never have suggested it in the first place. What if Jonny actually falls for her? Her timer will be up way earlier his is, and that means that he’s the one who’ll get hurt when she meets her person. Jonny should know better.

It’s sort of Patrick’s fault, though, him and his stupid suggestion. Maybe he should do something about it.

He corners Jonny at practice that afternoon, right when they get off the ice. “So, have a good morning?”

Jonny looks startled. “Um. Yeah, actually. Why?”

“Sharpy and I saw you. In the hot chocolate place.” Patrick keeps talking before Jonny can comment on that. “Look, I’m not so sure it’s a good idea.”

Jonny’s brows draw together. “Excuse me?”

“Dating a woman with a timer,” Patrick says. “I mean, what if you guys develop feelings? You know you’re going to get hurt. It’s stupid.”

He probably shouldn’t have said that last part, because Jonny gets his murder eyes all of a sudden. “It was your idea.”

“I know.” Patrick twists his hands together, then stops because that’s dumb. “But I wasn’t thinking. I know it’s your call, but—”

“Damn right it’s my call,” Jonny says. “Where do you get off, telling me it’s a bad idea?”

Jonny getting mad always gets Patrick mad; action and reaction. “I’m just trying to keep you from getting hurt, you dumbass,” Patrick hisses.

“Yeah, because you’ve never dated anyone and got hurt,” Jonny says. “Except, oh, wait.”

He stalks off, leaving Patrick too stung and angry to follow.

Patrick does finally make it to the locker room a few minutes later, because, you know, practice. Sweat. Grossness. It’s a thing. Jonny’s just gotten out of the showers when Patrick gets there and is dripping with a towel wrapped around his waist. The sight of him fills Patrick with angry heat and, for no reason, conjures up the image of him laughing with the sugar plum fairy again.

Patrick turns away and starts yanking off his gear with sharp tugs. He keeps glancing over at Jonny, though, and he doesn’t get any less angry. He kind of wants to go over there and get in his face, punch some of the stupid out of him. Maybe shove him up against the lockers a little bit. Get his mouth on that shoulder where wet skin stretches over smooth muscle and—

Patrick drops his shoulder pads and sits down, hard.


	7. Chapter 7

Patrick goes home and does nothing. Like, actually nothing, because each time he starts to do something, like put on a movie or take his shoes off or go into the kitchen for a sandwich, he zones out and three minutes later can’t remember why he stood up from the couch. Just can’t think of anything besides that moment when—

Well. Can’t think about that, either. So he ends up sort of paralyzed.

He finally cracks and calls his sister Erica. “How do you know that you’re attracted to guys?” he says as soon as she answers.

“What the fuck, Patrick?” she says.

Okay, so maybe he could have asked that better. Or at least said hello first. “Just—answer the question, okay?”

“Um, I don’t know.” She sounds like she’s considering looking up reliable mental institutions in the greater Chicago area. “Sometimes I see a guy, and I think he’s hot?”

“No, but, like, specifically. What do you notice?”

“Jesus, Pat, I’m in the middle of Nieman Marcus.” She laughs a little. “Is this really a conversation you want to have with me right now?”

Not really. Not ever, actually. But. “I’m not trying to laugh at you or anything. I just—really want to know. Please?”

“Okay,” she says slowly, like she’s taking this more seriously now. “Well, it depends on the guy, I guess. Like, some guys have good faces, and I notice their eyes or their dimples or their jawlines or whatever it is. Or sometimes it’s more about the body. To be honest, though, it’s usually the face that seals the deal.”

“It’s not all guys, though?”

“Duh. No. Are you attracted to all women?”

“Of course not,” he says. “But, uh.” He tries to come up with a way to ask the next thing without giving himself away, or getting way more TMI than he wants to with his little sister. His hands feel like they’re shaking, even though he can’t see any tremors. “When you look. How do you know? That you’re attracted, I mean.”

“Because otherwise, I wouldn’t like looking.” There’s a little bit of a grin in her voice. “What, just calling up your sisters to question their sexuality?”

“No, nothing like that.” Patrick grips the phone tighter and forces a laugh. “Just—having a debate with a friend.”

“Yeah? What does Jonny think makes women attracted to men?”

He breathes in a little too fast at the name. “What makes you think it’s him?”

She scoffs. “Come on. All your douchey debates are with Jonny.” She pauses. “Or Sharpy, I guess.”

“Fine, whatever.”

“You can tell him it’s mostly the face,” she says. “Though…Jonny’s ass might be the exception.”

“Erica!” he says, and she laughs.

“Oh, come on, like you haven’t noticed?”

“Thanks, you’ve been a big help,” he says, and hangs up while she’s still laughing.

***

He goes out that night. He puts on a nice shirt and good jeans and goes and sits in a bar and looks.

Erica’s right. It’s not all guys. A lot of them are gross, or just boring. He watches one middle-aged businessman have a loud conversation with this kind of round older guy and feels better about himself for a minute, because he feels nothing.

But—there are some. There’s a guy in the corner, playing pool, who has this tilted smile that Patrick really likes. His eyes are kind of bright, and his hair frames his face really nicely. And when the guy who’s with him leans over the table and his jacket rides up a little to expose a few inches of lower back, Patrick can feel his mouth go wet.

Fuck.

He tears his eyes away from those two, but there are others: a built guy by the bar with a really nice neck. A quieter guy at a table with a great jawline, nice and square, which Patrick imagines biting before he can stop himself. One guy at the bar turns around, and Patrick’s eyes go straight to his ass. It’s a good ass—not a hockey ass, but Patrick still finds his eyes lingering on its curves.

He’s pretty sure the only thing he’s ever looked at like that on the women he picks up are their timers.

Patrick closes his eyes. He knew, is the thing. Not about liking guys. But—he knew there was something. Knew it.

He gets up and goes back to the bar. This calls for getting very, very drunk.

***

It takes Sharpy four days to corner him.

“Okay, little Peeks,” Sharpy says after a not-so-great practice, when Patrick is hungover as fuck and hating the world. Especially the part of the world that consists of Jonny’s lower body, right now, in the underwear he’s wearing. “We’re going to lunch.”

It’s a mark of how out of it Patrick is that he doesn’t even argue.

He should know better, of course. Sharpy always has an agenda. Except when he doesn’t, but even then, it’s safer to assume that he does.

Sharpy gets to it as soon as they sit down in the burger place. “So. Want to tell me what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Patrick says automatically.

“Riiiight,” Sharpy drawls. “So you’ve just been showing up hungover for the past four days for no reason?”

Their booth seems really small, suddenly. “It’s been a bad week, okay?” he mumbles.

“Uh-huh,” Sharpy says. “Well, whenever you change your mind about telling me, I’ll be ready.” And then he proceeds to refuse to speak for the rest of the meal.

Patrick lasts halfway through the burger that, in retrospect, was clearly a bribe to get him to open up. Sharpy’s eating his own burger, staring off into space, casual as fuck. Like he’s got all the time in the world and doesn’t mind the silence.

“I figured out why my timer isn’t lit,” Patrick says.

Sharpy looks at him, mildly surprised. “Yeah? And why’s that?”

Patrick looks away. He thinks maybe he wanted Sharpy to ask, but he knows for sure that he doesn’t want to tell. Knows almost for sure.

“Okay,” Sharpy says, “if that’s how you want to play it.” But he drops the silence thing and talks to Patrick after that.

***

So maybe alcohol wasn’t the right way to deal with this new revelation in his life. Patrick decides to deal with it by working out instead. It’s not as much fun, but it’s better for his game, and to be honest, the drinking was starting to be not that much fun, either.

Jonny’s still mad at him, or at least not reaching out, so Patrick works out alone. And he pushes himself on the ice—not that he normally doesn’t, but he’s trying to leave everything there, now. To not have anything left over.

Team dinners are more awkward now that he and Jonny aren’t really talking. They have one later that week, and Patrick eats as quickly as he can and then makes his excuses. He doesn’t want to sit at a table where Jonny’s avoiding his eyes.

He’s almost out of the restaurant when he sees them. Two guys, maybe in their late twenties, leaning against the bar. One of them dips in to kiss the other—a sweet kiss, a casual kiss like they’ve done it hundreds of times. Like it’s normal. Both of their timers are zeroed out.

Patrick freezes. And then he hears, “Hey, Patrick, wait up!”

Jonny’s hurrying toward him, through the restaurant crowd. Patrick turns to look at him, mind still on what he just saw. The naturalness of it. Like…

“I, uh, just wanted to apologize.” Jonny sticks his hands in his pockets.

“Oh.” That snaps Patrick out of it, a little. Jonny almost never apologizes.

“I might have overreacted a little the other day,” Jonny says.

“No, it was…” Patrick shakes his head. “It was me, man. Sorry. I shouldn’t have said those things.”

Jonny looks profoundly relieved. “I just don’t want things to be weird between us anymore, okay?”

“Yeah.” Patrick’s gaze drifts back over to the couple at the bar. It’s not like he didn’t know gay people got timers; he just hadn’t really thought about it before. His timer search had always been about finding the right girl. But maybe—maybe this isn’t why his timer isn’t lit.

Maybe that means there’s another reason.

“Um, are you okay?” Jonny asks, and Patrick realizes he’s been staring for a minute here.

He looks back at Jonny and—is kind of floored. Because Jonny’s looking at him with all this concern, dark eyes staring into Patrick’s, and suddenly the gay thing doesn’t seem like the biggest problem anymore.

“I’m fine,” Patrick lies, and then gets the hell out of there.

***

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

Patrick goes home and paces for a while and then calls Erica.

“What if I were sort of gay?” he asks when she picks up.

She chokes a little, like maybe he caught her eating. “Sorry?”

“Just, if I were. What would you say?”

“Awesome, obviously,” she says.

It’s a really fast answer. Patrick stops pacing. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, of course.” She sounds so confident about it. “I would tell you to go get your timerless dude on. And then call me so that we can talk about boys, except not in detail, obviously, because ew. But it would be great.” She pauses. “This isn’t hypothetical, right?”

He sinks into the couch and drops his head to his knees. “No.”

“And it’s…not awesome?” she says. “Right. Because…you’re in the NHL and can’t date dudes? Because you don’t want to end up on Deadspin? Because you’re worried about what Mom will say?”

Patrick sighs. “Because I don’t want to just date timerless dudes.”

She sounds confused. “Who the hell do you want to date, then?”

He’s silent.

It takes her a minute to catch on. “Oh, Patrick, you didn’t.”

“I didn’t even say anything,” he says weakly.

“You didn’t fall for someone with a timer.”

“No!” he says. “I mean…I don’t know. I didn’t mean to.”

“Oh, Patty. Do you want to tell me who it is?”

“A hundred percent no,” he says, even though she can probably guess. He’s been stupid enough about Jonny over the years. The amazing thing is that he didn’t figure it out himself until now.

“Okay,” Erica says. They’re both silent for a minute. “Well, we love you no matter what, okay?”

“Thanks.” His throat feels a little thick.

Then, “Oh my God, is this what that conversation was about? About me liking guys?”

“I plead the fifth,” Patrick says, and hangs up the phone.

***

So at least one of his sisters would be okay with it. That’s not really the problem, though. The problem is the piece of plastic on Jonny’s wrist that Patrick can’t stop staring at during their next practice.

He always said he’d never be dumb enough to fall for a girl with a timer. Turns out he was only half right.

“Are you okay? You’re being weird,” Jonny says.

“Yeah, I’m good.” Patrick tears his eyes away from Jonny’s timer. Fourteen years, eight months, and seven days before Jonny meets the person who makes his face light up like Duncs’ did when he met Lorelei. The person who’ll make Jonny sneak away from dinners to smile stupidly into the phone. The person he takes home to meet his parents.

The person who isn’t Patrick.

“If you say so.” Jonny kicks at his leg. “Call of Duty at mine?”

Patrick wants to say no. He should say no. But—then he would have to spend the afternoon without Jonny, and that just sounds horrible. “Okay,” he says.

It’s a big mistake. It’s a huge mistake, and it’s also great, because Jonny’s right next to him on the couch, jostling him and swearing and generally being so Jonny. Patrick wants to lean into him and…well, lots of things, starting with biting his shoulder through the stupid thin t-shirt he’s wearing. It’s such a new impulse, and it makes him play like shit, because it turns out it’s hard to focus on shooting stuff when you’re looking at the way someone’s arms flex when they use the controller.

“Ugh, get it together,” Jonny says when Patrick has completely failed to cover him as instructed.

“You get it together,” Patrick says, which is a pathetic chirp, but Jonny has a really good torso, okay?

“Hey.” Jonny puts the controller down. “Are you actually okay?”

“I told you I was.”

Jonny narrows his eyes at him, like he’s a puzzle. It makes Patrick kind of uncomfortable, having that much of Jonny’s focus trained on him, but mostly in a way where he needs to shift and hope Jonny doesn’t look at his lap. “Is this about Carly?”

“Carly?” Patrick asks blankly. “No. Not at all.”

“Okay.” Jonny doesn’t really relax, but he does get less squinty. “Well, good.”

“That was like a million years ago,” Patrick says.

“You just seem like you’ve been off since then.” Jonny’s looking at him with those really intense eyes. It’s not helping Patrick’s hard-on go down, nor is it helping him not want to lean forward and kiss Jonny’s mouth.

_It’s you,_ he doesn’t say. _I went out with you without realizing that I’m an idiot who’s actually maybe a little bit in love with you, and it’s killing me because you have a timer and can never belong to me._

Patrick shrugs. “I guess sometimes it just sucks more around the holidays.”

Jonny’s face does a weird little twisty thing. “Yeah,” he says, “I get that,” and he lets Patrick slump into his side as he brings up the Netflix menu.

Yeah; Jonny is really, really not helping.


	8. Chapter 8

So, okay, Patrick’s fallen in love with his best friend. His best friend who has an active timer. It sucks, but it’s not the end of the world, because if Patrick understands it right, love doesn’t have to be forever. He’s never actually been in it before, but from what he’s gathered, people get over it all the time. There will probably be a day when looking at Jonny doesn’t feel like a skate blade through the chest. He just needs a distraction.

Possibly Duncs isn’t the right person to help him find said distraction, but Duncs is really, really set on it.

“I just feel so bad that you haven’t found your person yet,” Duncs says to Patrick a few days later, when they’re in Minneapolis. They’re in the locker room, just out of the showers. “I mean, your timer person is the best, you know?”

“Uh-huh.” Patrick focuses on buttoning his shirt so he doesn't have to look at him.

“I don’t even know who I’d be without Lorelei anymore,” Duncs goes on. “You’re just so unlucky, man.”

“Right.” Patrick finishes with the shirt and tries to remember that Duncs is well intentioned and doesn’t actually deserve Patrick punching him in the face right now.

“But don’t worry,” Duncs says, “I’m gonna help you.”

Now Patrick looks up. “Um. What?”

“We’re gonna go out tonight.” Duncs slings an arm around Patrick’s shoulders. “You and me. We’ll go out, and we’ll find her. No matter how long it takes.”

“Uh.” Patrick looks to Sharpy, but Sharpy is smirking at them and seems to be enjoying the show too much to help. Patrick doesn’t even risk looking at Jonny. “Are…you sure you don’t need to spend tonight talking to Lorelei?”

“She gave me permission,” Duncs says seriously. “She understands the importance of finding true love.”

“Of course she does.” Patrick gives Sharpy a death glare where he’s snickering in the corner.

“Awesome.” Duncs slaps him on the back. “You’re not going to regret this, man.”

“Right,” Patrick says weakly. “Sounds great.”

***

Patrick thought it was awkward trying to pick up women back when he thought he was attracted to them. Turns out it’s even worse when he’s admitted that he isn’t. Add in a teammate observing him, and he basically wants to drown himself in his glass of beer.

“How about that one?” Duncs says, pointing to a woman standing by the bar at the place down the street from their hotel.

He can’t see her wrist, but she’s got acres of brown hair and is waving her hands while she talks a mile a minute. “She’s already talking to some other guy,” Patrick says. “I’m not going to interrupt.”

“Okay.” Duncs turns toward the door. “What about that one?”

He’s pointing at a woman walking in with her friends. “Timer,” Patrick says.

“Oh, yeah.” Duncs turns back to the bar. “I, um. Do you see anyone without a timer?”

Patrick does a cursory sweep of arms. It’s such a familiar thing—something he was doing just two months ago—and yet doing it again makes him feel a little sick. He can tell how much he was never really looking at the women, now. It’s not that he can’t tell who’s attractive—it’s pretty basic, what to look for—but he doesn’t feel anything much when he looks at them. Not the way he does when he looks at guys now. He can admire the shiny brown hair on that first woman all he wants, but he doesn’t get the same leap in his stomach that he does when he looks at the guy she’s talking to.

That guy’s mouth. His cheekbones. God. How did Patrick not realize this?

“That woman at the end of the bar,” Duncs says.

The woman in question is wearing a sparkly little dress and talking to a couple of her friends. She’s one of the women Patrick would easily have categorized as sufficiently attractive, back when he was looking for that, and she doesn’t have a timer on her arm.

“Yeah. Okay,” he says.

Patrick always rolls his sleeves up when he goes out. He did it tonight out of force of habit, and he makes sure they’re still rolled above his timer as he goes up to the bar. “Can I get a Sam Adams Winter?” he asks the bartender, leaning over the bar, and when he leans back he makes eye contact with the girl and gives her a smile.

“Hi, I’m Patrick,” he says, holding out her hand.

“Julia.” Her smile is as bright as her dress. Patrick wishes that meant something to him.

He knows how to do this, though; he’s even good at it, for all the good it’s done him. So he and Julia have a perfectly nice conversation while he drinks his beer. He learns that she’s a communications student at the University of Minnesota and follows football, not hockey. He tells her how they’re on the road right now, and they talk about how much it can suck to live out of a suitcase. They don’t talk about the timer thing. He doesn’t even want to look at the outline of her boobs in the shiny dress.

Her friends start calling her when Patrick’s halfway through his beer, and she says she has to go.

“Can I get your number?” he asks, and she smiles and pulls out a pen.

Duncs has his phone out and is texting when Patrick goes back to their table. He looks up right away when Patrick sits down, though. “So? How’d it go?”

“Got her number,” Patrick says with a wide, forced grin.

“Just her number?” Duncs looks around for the girl, who’s gone now. “So you’re going to meet up with her later?”

“Dude,” Patrick says. “She lives in Minnesota.”

“Oh.” Duncs wilts a bit. “But Minnesota isn’t really that far from Chicago, and if you guys hit it off—”

“Yeah. Maybe I’ll call her tomorrow,” Patrick says.

“Okay.” Duncs seems mollified. He leans forward. “I just really want this for you, man. I mean, you guys were so supportive, and now what I have with Lorelei—”

“Yeah,” Patrick says. “I get it.”

It’s not much of an answer, but Duncs is distracted when his phone buzzes again. He looks down at it, gets this tiny grin on his face, and then visibly hesitates.

“It’s okay,” Patrick says. “You can go talk to her. I’m good.”

Duncs looks up. “Really? Because if you want—”

“Nah, I think one’s enough for tonight,” Patrick says. “Besides, game day tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah,” Duncs says gratefully. “I guess we should go.”

Patrick still has half his beer left, so he waves his hand. “Go on without me, man. I’ll finish up and be right behind you.”

Duncs hesitates, half standing up. “You sure?”

“Definitely.” Patrick puts on his firmest face. “Have a good night, man.”

“Thanks.” Duncs claps Patrick on the shoulder. “Glad we found someone for you.”

“Yup.” Patrick’s smile is closer to a grimace, but Duncs is already out the door.

Patrick sips the rest of his beer. The guy with the great cheekbones is still talking to shiny-hair girl, and Patrick lets his eyes linger again. He could see it, maybe, going up and talking to that guy and flirting and going back to his place and making out. Maybe more. The guy has a timer, so it wouldn’t even be weird. He can almost want it. Except—except that this guy isn’t who he—

Patrick tips his head back and drains the rest of his beer before walking out.

***

“Good time with Duncs last night?” Jonny asks the next day when they’re getting ready for their pre-game naps.

Jonny was asleep when Patrick got back, which was a good thing, given how Patrick was feeling. He doesn’t need to give Jonny any more reason to be worried about him. “Yeah. Didn’t really meet anyone, though.”

“Really?” Jonny’s head swings up in surprise. “Duncs said you got someone’s number.”

Patrick has no idea when that information would have changed hands. “Um, yeah, but, you know. Not really interested.” He shrugs. “She lives in Minnesota, you know?” He tries out a laugh. “Not as bad as, like, Canada, but still pretty far.”

“Canada’s too good for you,” Jonny grouches, and Patrick could never get behind such a ridiculous statement, but God, right now it pinches a little, because of the numbers on Jonny’s wrist. That’s one part of Canada that’s too good for him, anyway.

Jonny gets under the covers while Patrick shrugs on a t-shirt and gets the lights. Patrick’s always loved this: the few minutes when they’re changing into sleep clothes and settling in. It’s all quiet movements and practiced intimacy. Like they’re both sinking down into comfort, in separate beds but still together somehow. Maybe he should have paid more attention over the past few years to just how much he likes it.

They’re both lying in bed with the light off and the dim afternoon sunlight filtering through the curtains when Jonny says, “Pat.”

“Mm?” Patrick can’t see him, with his head in the pillow the way it is, but he can feel Jonny there.

“I know you said you didn’t want to,” Jonny said. “But if you want to start looking for your person again. It’s okay.”

“I know,” Patrick says, because that was like five problems ago, really.

“I just mean,” Jonny says. “I won’t think it’s weird that you changed your mind, or anything.”

“Thanks,” Patrick says. The fabric of his pillow is up against his face, hotel-clean and smelling a little like detergent. “But I don’t think I can. Right now. I think I need to—not.”

“Yeah, okay,” Jonny says on a sleepy sort of sigh. Patrick falls asleep while imagining what it would be like to feel that sigh against his skin.

***

They beat Minnesota and lose to Detroit and then they’re home. Patrick’s relieved, because being in love with Jonny is easier when they aren’t sharing a room. Still not easy. But Patrick doesn’t expect it to be easy right away. Getting over someone takes a really long time, probably. Maybe by fourteen years from now, it’ll be better.

In the meantime, he just has to try really, really hard not to stare in the locker room.

It’s kind of a challenge. Patrick’s used to locker rooms, but that was before he realized that it might be fun to look. Now he has to fight the desire to run his eyes over Jonny’s chest every time he’s shirtless, and a lot of times he fails.

“Hey. Earth to Peekaboo,” Sharpy says.

“What?” Patrick tears his eyes away from the muscles of Jonny’s back, the ones that shift when he moves his arms and—oh. He’s still looking. He turns away and looks at Sharpy.

Who’s looking back at him with an all-too-knowing look. Patrick kind of wants to impale himself on a skate blade. “Just wondering if you had plans this afternoon?” Sharpy asks, smirking.

Patrick does have plans. They occurred to him during practice, and he’s kind of impatient to put them into motion. But—they’ll keep for a few hours. The last thing he needs is to let himself to turn into an antisocial weirdo. “Nope, I’m free.”

Sharpy breaks into a smile. “Good. Because Tazer and I are going to lunch. You coming?”

Patrick hates Sharpy and everything that he stands for.

He goes to lunch.

The thing is, it would be easier if he could just not enjoy Jonny’s company. Jonny’s in a good mood at lunch, and Patrick just—he _feeds_ on it. He meets Jonny’s eyes and laughs when he laughs and can feel that he’s grinning too brightly and that Sharpy’s watching knowingly, but he doesn’t care, because it’s so good. Jonny’s just—Patrick doesn’t know how anyone could make eye contact with him and not want to look at him more. He doesn’t know how the waitress isn’t blushing when Jonny looks at her to order his food, still a little flushed and laughing from the stupid conversation they were having about the dangers of mixing food and sex (and yes, Patrick should probably stop having this kind of conversation with him).

Actually, the waitress sort of is blushing, probably because she knows who they all are. It’s pretty impossible for Patrick to feel jealous, though. She doesn’t have any more of a shot with Jonny than Patrick does. Maybe Patrick should form a support group.

So yeah, he leaves the lunch feeling high on Jonny’s eyes and smile and stupid conversation. Then he goes to his car alone and feels himself start to come down from it: the euphoria draining away, emptiness taking its place. The consciousness that this is how it’s going to be from now on—alive in Jonny’s presence, sick and wanting when he’s not—until he manages, somehow, to get over it and stop being so pathetic.


	9. Chapter 9

Maybe Patrick would be less pathetic if his deferred plans from this morning weren’t to watch lots of gay porn.

He’s not sure why he hasn’t done it already, actually. He doesn’t usually watch a ton of porn, because his favorite place to jerk off is in the shower and it’s hard to get porn in there, but he has a healthy appreciation for it. Usually it’s some girl with big tits taking a guy’s cock, and yeah, Patrick’s just realizing now that maybe he was a little more interested in the cock than in where it went. But there’s probably so much better he can do now that he knows what he’s actually looking for.

This might also help with the little part of him that’s unconvinced—a part that thinks everything will go back to normal soon, because he’s thought he liked girls for twenty-one years and has only thought the opposite for about three weeks. So maybe he wants to test himself a little.

He doesn’t have a lot of experience in the gay porn world. But he figures Google is his friend, and he is not disappointed. He ends up on Pornhub because it’s the first link, and he clicks on the first video with a vaguely promising title and—okay, wow. That’s a lot of naked guy, right there.

There are naked guys in straight porn. But usually they’re not so into other naked guys. Usually it’s not some guy looking so thrilled to swallow someone else’s cock while he fists his own, and yeah. Patrick’s pretty hard.

He watches another video after that one, because, you know, research. He’s not touching himself very actively, because he wants to last, but the second video features a tall guy with dark hair and kind of intense eyes, and he starts fucking a smaller guy, and Patrick is done. The smaller guy arches his back and looks like he really loves taking it, and Patrick’s coming all over his hand and imagining Jonny’s fingers on his hips while he does it.

So that was a successful experiment. By one measure, anyway.

To really test it, Patrick gives himself half an hour, eats some dinner, and goes back to it again. This time it’s two guys eating out a third and then fucking him from both ends, and Patrick loses it in about ten minutes.

Okay. So. He was probably right about the gay thing.

***

The incredibly crappy feeling he’s started to get whenever he leaves Jonny’s presence means that Patrick’s sometimes a little leery to get drawn into it. Not as leery as he should be, really, because he doesn’t have the best self-control ever. But enough so that Jonny evidently still thinks he’s being weird.

Jonny slaps him on the back as they walk out of practice the next week. “Come over to my place. We haven’t hung out in ages.”

“We hung out last night.” Patrick says.

Jonny gives him his most unimpressed look. “That was a game.”

That is…accurate. Patrick probably can’t expect Jonny to count a game as hang-out time. He can still feel the spot where Jonny’s hand touched his back, though, and he knows this is a bad idea.

But what is he supposed to do—never hang out with Jonny again? That would be stupid and impossible and besides, Patrick really, really doesn’t want that.

He looks at Jonny’s stupid perfect face and says, “Yeah, okay.”

Patrick really must have been being weird, because Jonny actually smiles at that. Like maybe he’s trying put Patrick at ease, like he thinks he’s uncomfortable. “Come over for dinner. I’ll get takeout.”

“Not sushi,” Patrick says as Jonny starts walking away.

Jonny calls back, “No promises,” and Patrick flips him off as he goes to his car and it feels a little bit normal.

He’s rethinking by the time he shows up at Jonny’s door, though. He has the trembly feeling in his pit of his stomach that he’s started getting when he’s going to see Jonny, ever since he figured this thing out, and it’s sort of a good feeling but also sort of not. And he knows it will make him feel sick later, when he has to go home alone.

Jonny answers the door in this fucking blue plaid shirt that falls really nicely off his shoulders and says, “Hey, come in. I got Thai.”

“Seriously?” Patrick says skeptically. “Did you get the massaman curry with extra shrimp?”

“Of course,” Jonny says, like he hasn’t regaled Patrick with a nutrition lesson every time Patrick’s tried to eat Thai food for the past two and a half years.

Patrick comes in, suspicious. There has to be a catch.

Jonny keeps on being in a good mood as they set up NHL 10, though, and fuck, Patrick loves him like this. Well—who is he kidding, he loves pretty much all versions of Jonny. But this one is great. Jonny’s full of happy energy, jostling his side while they play and making terrible jokes and then looking really pleased with himself for making them.

Patrick can do this: hang out with Jonny and not have it mean too much. The way Jonny’s arm brushes against his as they play makes his skin light up, but it won’t kill him. This is endurable. It has to be, because Jonny _is not his._

It starts to get a little less endurable when they switch to watching a movie— _Die Hard,_ because Jonny’s a loser who likes movies from twenty years ago, even if, okay, this is a pretty great one—and Patrick somehow ends up leaning into Jonny’s side. It’s just—so much. He can feel Jonny all along his arm and his ribs and on every inch of his skin, even the parts that aren’t touching.

It’s so distracting that he doesn’t realize he’s stopped looking at the TV screen until he notices that Jonny is staring at him. Patrick catches his eye and then looks away, flushing. He hadn’t realized Jonny was quite so close.

“You can talk to me about it if you want, you know,” Jonny says softly. His hand lands on Patrick’s upper arm.

“Talk about what?” Patrick asks, a little strangled-sounding, because Jonny’s hand on his arm is making his stomach fizz.

“I know it sucked when her timer didn’t match yours,” Jonny says.

Patrick means to let out an exasperated breath, because, this _again,_ but it comes out more like a sigh. “I don’t care about Carly,” he says, and it’s true, because he can’t think about anyone else right now. Can’t Jonny tell the way his closeness is making Patrick’s head spin?

“Oh,” Jonny says. “Okay.” His thumb rubs little circles against Patrick’s arm, and that’s distracting enough that Patrick doesn’t notice him leaning closer until he’s there. “So…you’re over her? You’re okay?”

“Yeah. Of course.” It isn’t even a lie. Patrick can’t remember what he has to not be okay about when Jonny’s this close.

“Okay.” Jonny’s tongue darts out to lick his lips. “That’s…good.”

Fuck. Jonny is _way too close._ Patrick can’t be expected to function like this.

Jonny breathes out, his breath hot on Patrick’s skin. “So, um. Would it be okay if I…”

His hand goes to Patrick’s chin, tips it up. Patrick just has time to feel his whole body quicken before Jonny leans forward and presses his lips to Patrick’s.

And, oh God. It’s everything Patrick wants. Jonny’s lips are soft against his, his hand warm on Patrick’s waist. Their mouths melt together, the inside of Jonny’s lips lush and slick when he grabs Patrick’s lip and pulls on it a little. Patrick wants to live in Jonny’s mouth. He wants to never have to leave.

His entire body is alight with it. Jonny slips his fingers around Patrick’s wrist, and the touch to the delicate skin there makes Patrick shiver. Every inch of him feels amazing. It’s like Jonny’s tongue is touching him everywhere.

He gives himself five more seconds before he pulls away.

Jonny leans in for more, right away, and Patrick dips his head to avoid it.

“Pat?” Jonny asks. He’s breathing hard. Patrick can see where his lower lip is slick from their kisses.

“I can’t,” Patrick whispers. “I can’t.”

Jonny lets out a shuddering breath and leans forward, resting their foreheads together. “But…”

Patrick can feel Jonny’s breath on his face. It brushes against his lower lip where he wants Jonny’s tongue to be. “You’re not ever going to be mine,” he says.

Jonny makes a little sound in the back of his throat and tightens his hands on Patrick’s wrists. Not in a forceful way—just an instinctive protest. 

Patrick breathes in once more, tastes Jonny on his tongue, then gets up and walks out the door.


	10. Chapter 10

Patrick walks home and just about crawls out of his skin. He thought he felt desperate before, but that one taste of Jonny has made it a thousand times harder to live without. He almost turns around twice to go back to Jonny’s, but—no. He can’t have that.

Except that when he’s lying in bed later that night, willing sleep to come and trying to forget, he’s not sure he can live without it.

But the next morning he gets up. He eats breakfast and goes to morning skate and yeah, it’s all awful, but this is his life.

Fourteen years of this. And then nothing will change, except that Jonny will be in love with someone else, and the rest of Patrick’s life will be even worse.

Skating helps a little. Patrick can’t quite immerse himself in self-pity in the same way when he’s moving on the ice. But Jonny’s there in the locker room afterward, and he looks bleak enough that Patrick has to face the other way to unlace his skates or risk letting the entire team see him falling apart.

They lose the game that night. No one else goes out afterward, but Patrick does.

He has a mission.

***

He doesn’t know too much about Chicago’s gay club scene. See also: the thing where he didn’t realize he would be into that until last month. But he has Google, and Tommy’s sounds the least embarrassing of the clubs he could find, so that’s where he is at eleven p.m.

It’s kind of stupid. Patrick’s not sure what he’s even doing there, except that he can’t just sit at home and think about how he can’t be in the same room as Jonny anymore and how he still doesn’t have a soulmate. He wants to forget who and where he is and lose himself in someone else.

Like maybe the guy standing at the bar in the obscenely tight t-shirt.

It’s the kind of outfit Patrick might have rolled his eyes at under other circumstances. But something stirs low in his gut at the sight of the guy’s muscles outlined in black. Something he’s been conditioned into from years in a locker room, maybe. And, okay, he does know why he’s here.

He circles around so he can see the guy’s arm. A timer, ticking down from three years. That’s perfect: Patrick doesn’t want to end up bringing someone to the clinic this week. He just wants…

The guy rolls his shoulders a little, and Patrick sucks in air.

He sidles up to the bar. “Buy you a drink?” he asks.

The guy turns and gives him a once-over. There’s a spark of interest in his eyes. “Sure.”

***

Three dances with the guy—Mike—is enough to have Patrick panting for more. Mike’s a little bigger than him, just the way Patrick’s always liked it. He was always into it when a girl was taller than him _(should have known, should have known,_ his mind sings to him, and he ignores it). With Mike, it’s even better: he grips Patrick’s hips so much harder than girls ever do, and Patrick gets to slide his hands up a muscled torso.

Halfway through the second song, Mike brings his hips flush with Patrick’s, and Patrick feels the growing bulge in his pants. He exhales hard and rolls their hips together.

Half a song of that has him gasping into Mike’s shoulder, and when Mike tips his head down to lick at Patrick’s mouth, Patrick opens up for it like he’s starving. By the end of the third song, he’s so turned on he’s practically shaking.

“Want to get out of here?” Mike asks.

They go to Mike’s place, because Patrick doesn’t really want to have the “you have a nice apartment” talk. He’s not looking to impress this guy. He just wants to get off, and soon.

Mike has a nice enough place, anyway. He strips off their coats and pulls Patrick’s body to his as soon as they’re through the front door, acres of hot hard body lighting Patrick up. They grind their hips together and bite at each other’s mouths for a while, and Patrick can feel himself leaking into his boxers.

He grabs at Mike’s ass, and Mike pushes him up against the wall of the foyer. That’s hot, but it also hurts a bit, because they just had a game and Patrick got kind of banged up. Not much, but the little shock of pain is enough to take him out of the moment. Mike’s body is bearing down on him, forcibly grinding him against the wall, and…that starts to feel a little less hot and a little more stifling.

Patrick kisses him some more and tries to ignore it. He thinks if he could just get a minute of space, it would be better, but he doesn’t to do anything to make Mike think he’s not into this, because he is, fuck, his body is so hungry for this.

He pulls his head back. “Want to move this to the bedroom?”

That works: they separate long enough to get there, and then they’re in a more open space, stripping off each other’s clothes. Patrick’s enjoying seeing each new expanse of Mike’s skin revealed, but for some reason taking off his own clothes makes him feel…squirmy. Unsettled. Crazy, crazy, since he’s naked in front of so many guys every day in the locker room. But right now it feels like something vital and protective is being stripped away.

He seizes Mike’s mouth and kisses to get himself through it, tongue working fast and furious to drive out anything else that might be trying to creep in. Mike seems really into that: grinding his hips against Patrick’s and kneading his ass once he’s got Patrick’s jeans on the floor. “Fucking hot,” Mike murmurs around his tongue, and then he slides to his knees.

That takes Patrick by surprise: he hadn’t thought Mike would be the kind of guy to go to his knees first, unprompted. It’s quite the sight, a guy kneeling there, licking his lips for Patrick’s dick as he pulls his boxers down. The first touch of Mike’s tongue to the head of his dick sends a jolt of pleasure through his body, but it also makes him…flinch, a little? That doesn’t make any sense, because it’s a blowjob, and those are awesome, but all Patrick can think is that it feels kind of fast.

And that’s crazy, too, because he was desperate for it just five minutes ago. There’s nothing about this that’s fast. But Patrick still feels out of step, breathing hard for reasons that might not just be arousal.

Mike bobs back and forth, taking more and more of it into his throat each time, and it’s like he’s pulling Patrick’s reaction forcibly out his dick. Patrick’s definitely turned on, no doubt about it—impossible not to be when there’s a mouth around his cock—but he also feels like the situation took off without his control. Like his arousal is this thing that’s being torn away from him, out of his control, and he just wants—

He pulls Mike off his dick and stumbles back.

Mike falls forward a little, startled. “What the fuck, dude?” he asks, wiping his mouth.

“Sorry.” Patrick’s hands are shaking. “Sorry, I…”

“What, did I bite you or something?” Mike gives a forced little chuckle.

“No. Nothing like that.” Patrick scrabbles for his underwear, pulls it up over his wet dick.

“Are you—” Mike narrows his eyes at him. “Are you fucking _leaving?”_

The rest of his clothes are scattered everywhere; Patrick fumbles them into a pile against his chest, sleeves and pant legs flopping down. “I’m—I'm really sorry."

"Fucking cocktease," Mike says, and Patrick flees.

He pulls on his pants and shirt and coat in the stairwell, hopping down the stairs as he does it and trying not to trip and die or stab himself anywhere important with hands that are still shaking. His chest is heaving as much as it was while he was still getting the blowjob, but his gasps are verging on sobs, and he just wants to get out of there as soon as possible. Wants to get out of there and have someone to hold him and tell him it’s all right until he’s not shaking anymore. Wants—

He calls Erica as soon as he’s outside. “It’s Jonny,” he says.

She doesn’t ask for context. “Of course it’s Jonny.”

“He has a timer.”

“No kidding,” Erica says. “I think there’s a whole segment of the internet devoted to figuring out whose timer is due to go off at the same time his is.”

Patrick leans against a building and tries to make his breath come out less like sobs. “It’s so stupid.”

“It’s not.” Erica’s voice gets softer. “It makes sense. You guys are great together.”

“Not if I can’t look at him without—” Patrick can’t even finish the sentence. He lets his head thunk back against the building. “We can’t be together.”

“Why not?”

“Because he has a timer, Erica.” He tucks his free hand under his other arm to stay warm. “I’m not going to…he would just leave me.”

“Maybe,” she says. “But what if he didn’t?”

This is not what Patrick needs to hear. He pushes off the wall and starts walking again. He knows he can’t walk all the way home, but he just needs to walk right now. “That’s not how it works. Your timer person is going to be your person. You know that.”

“But maybe what you guys have will be strong enough by then.”

Patrick squeezes his eyes shut for a moment and starts walking faster. “If it were going to be strong enough, I’d be the one on his timer.”

There’s silence for a minute. She can’t dispute that one; it’s how it works, and they both know it.

“Does he know?” she asks after a bit.

“Yeah.” The wind is freezing, and he presses his arms against his sides as he walks. “He, uh. He sort of kissed me.”

“What?” she squeaks. “What did you do?”

He sighs. “I walked out.”

“Patrick!” She sounds shocked.

He grits his teeth together. _”Erica.”_

“Sorry,” she says. “Sorry. It’s just…I want you to have that, you know? If you love him.”

He knows. He wants himself to have that, too. But. “Do you ever have any doubts?” he asks. “Do you have any doubts that when you meet your person in four and a half years, no matter who you guys have been with in the meantime, you’ll fall in love and it will be forever?”

She’s quiet for a moment. “No,” she says finally in a soft voice.

He gusts a cloud of air out between his teeth. “Exactly,” he says. “It’s not a thing that you can doubt. And I’m not the person on his timer.”

“Fuck,” she says, voice still soft. “I’m so sorry, Pat.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Me, too.” A car goes blazing by, and he hunches in on himself. “Don’t tell anyone, okay?”

“I won’t,” she says.


	11. Chapter 11

The next day at practice, Jonny keeps looking at him. Patrick has a bad feeling about it, because it seems like Jonny’s gearing up for a conversation along the lines of the one Patrick had with Erica last night. Patrick’s not sure he can take that. It’s one thing to hear someone else tell him how he ought to break his own heart. It’s another to hear it from the person who’ll be responsible for it.

He doesn’t get to hear what Jonny’s thinking, though, because a couple of days later, they play the Kings, and Jonny goes down on the ice.

Patrick’s ten feet away when it happens. He sees the stick come down onto Jonny’s wrist, sees the weird angle that shows him a flash of skin between sleeve and glove. Hears the crack and the intake of breath around the stadium. The fans start booing, but the boos change to confused murmurs really fast, because there’s something coming to a halt by Patrick’s feet, and that’s—that’s Jonny’s timer, on the ice.

Jonny’s timer.

On the ice.

Patrick stares at it. Can’t do anything else for a minute. Then his head whips around to Jonny—Jonny, who’s curled up, hand tucked into his body. Jonny, whose timer is in pieces at Patrick’s feet. But that’s impossible, because Patrick saw—

People are skating out to help Jonny, refs and trainers. No one seems to want to come near the timer, though: it sits in its own little circle on the ice, all the players standing back from it. Like they’re as horrified as Patrick is.

Patrick…he should move, he should help, but he can’t. Can only stare at Jonny as he’s helped off the ice, eyes set and jaw clenched against pain, left arm tight against his stomach. He meets Patrick’s eyes for just a second as he passes. Patrick doesn’t know what Jonny sees there, but whatever it is, it makes Jonny flinch. Like Patrick struck him.

Someone skates by Patrick, someone from the rink, picking up the pieces of the timer. And then—then Patrick’s supposed to _play._

It’s a good thing Patrick’s so used to playing hockey regardless of anything going on in his life, because otherwise he would never be able to get through the rest of the third period. He thinks maybe everyone else is thrown off by it, too: hockey players get injured all the time, sure, but Patrick’s never heard of anything happening to anyone’s timer. No one scores in the last ten minutes. The Hawks hold onto their lead. But no one’s celebrating much.

Jonny’s long gone by the time Patrick gets off the ice, of course. Media is a blur; Patrick hopes he doesn’t say anything too embarrassing, because all he can think about is getting out of there as soon as possible. Getting out of there and turning on his phone.

He has it out as soon as his car door shuts. It’s not hard to find the story: #tazertimer is trending hard on Twitter, most of it people freaking out with exclamation points and blurry pictures of the ice and OMG JONNYs. Some people are calling for the NHL to make rules banning timers until after retirement or to create special wristguards “to prevent another tragedy like this.” There’s a lot of debate about whether Jonny can get a timer put back in, and Patrick skims over that, because he doesn’t need to think about that right now. There’s something he’s looking for. He can’t have been the only person to see—there must be something about—

There isn’t. He shoves his phone in his pocket and drives home, even though he’s breathing really hard and should probably take a cab, but that would take time and he just wants to get out of there. 

When he gets home, he opens his laptop, and it’s the same story. Everyone’s horrified. They can’t get over what they saw on the ice. Some people are even talking about the blood, and that’s—Patrick doesn’t _get_ it. Because he was looking at Jonny’s arm. And yeah, it was fast, and it was confusing, and he only saw it for a second, and but he knows what he saw.

There was no blood.

There wasn’t any wound at all. Just skin, unbroken and whole, after the stick slashed down and pushed away Jonny’s sleeve. Just skin. Even after the timer fell.

Patrick gets up and paces back and forth in his living room, because it’s not possible. He wants to think he’s wrong, but—he’s used to seeing things on the ice. Used to glancing at a situation and taking in all the significant details in a split second. There should have been a wound there, should have been a tangled mess of machinery and muscle and blood where the timer implant ripped from his skin, and there just _wasn’t._

He sits down on the couch and clenches his hands to stop them from shaking. He doesn’t get it at all. There’s only one thing he can think of to explain it, and it’s twisting itself around his stomach, because—

The doorbell rings.

There’s no way it could be Jonny, so of course it is. He’s pale, tired-looking, with a bandage wrapped all around his left wrist. He stares at Patrick, and Patrick stares right back.

“I was going to tell you,” Jonny says.

His eyes are so big in his face. Patrick’s breathing hard again. “Is there even anything under that?” he asks, of Jonny’s wrist. “Or is it just a bandage over nothing?”

“Of course there is,” Jonny says, and then he bites his lip. “I—I cut into it in the car. With a pocket knife.”

Patrick spins away, walks halfway down the length of his entryway. Then he makes himself stop, try to breathe steadily.

He hears Jonny come in and shut the door. “This isn’t how I wanted you to find out,” he says, and that’s it, Patrick is getting a _drink._

He comes back from the kitchen with a single beer for himself because—because Jonny just cut into his arm with a pocket knife, for fuck’s sake, and what even is—. He takes a long pull of the beer in the doorway, then heads into the living room.

Jonny’s already on the couch. He’s not sprawled about like he usually is: he’s sitting stiffly, hands underneath his thighs, hunched like he’s trying to take up as little space as possible. Like he’s braced for something.

Patrick sits down on the arm. The air in the room is thick, and it’s audible when Jonny breathes before talking.

“I was sixteen,” he says, addressing the blank space in front of him.

Patrick takes a drink of his beer.

“All my friends were getting timers,” Jonny says. His hands are on his knees now, clenched tight. “They kept asking me why I didn’t have one, going on about it, not letting it go. And then—then Nick, this older guy on my team, he pulled me aside after practice one day and told me where I could get one.”

“A fake one,” Patrick says.

Jonny nods, a single jerk of his head. “He had a friend, this real tech-y girl. She said it would look just like the real thing, that I could set it for whatever time I wanted. That there was adhesive that would keep it from falling off during games. That no one would be able to tell the difference.”

Patrick shakes his head reflexively. “No way,” he says reflexively. “No way is some girl just doing that. She would—I don’t know, she would be on the news.”

“I don’t think she did it for very long,” Jonny says. “She went off and got a job at 3M pretty soon after that. This was just a thing she did, for a while.”

Okay, Patrick guesses he can buy that. He’s seen the evidence, after all. But… “Why?” he asks, and he’s not asking about the girl. “Why not just get a real one?”

Jonny looks up at him for the first time since he sat on the couch, and the look in his eyes is abruptly painful. “Because I wanted to go into the NHL,” he says. “Because I knew I was gay.”

Patrick stares at him for a moment. Then he slides forward onto the couch proper. “Oh.” 

“Yeah,” Jonny says.

“Fuck.”

Jonny tips his head forward.

“You…” Patrick swallows around the question. “You knew you were gay?”

“Since I was thirteen,” Jonny says. He rubs his palms over his knees. “For a while I pretended to myself that I wasn’t, but…I couldn’t risk that, you know? A soulmate showing up. My timer going off and people wondering where the lucky girl was.”

Patrick takes a mouthful of beer. It tastes strange, cold on his tongue. “Have you…dated, at all?” He tries to remember if he’s seen Jonny hooking up. He’s left bars with women sometimes, and now Patrick wonders what he did with them. Maybe the same thing Patrick did: had sex and didn’t think it was all that great.

Jonny looks at him, a wry glance. “Besides you?”

“That didn’t count,” Patrick says, though he has the sudden feeling that maybe it did.

Jonny just shrugs. “A little. In other cities, mostly, where I could be more discreet. Probably did the same things you did.”

“I didn’t, uh.” Patrick pulls his knees to his chest, then feels self-conscious about it. “I didn’t know. Until a little while ago.”

“Oh.” Jonny looks surprised.

“Yeah.” Patrick’s shoulders draw up. They’re silent for a little bit, Jonny still tensed on the far end of the couch, and Patrick can feel the creeping awkwardness. “Look,” he says finally, “I’m not going to tell anyone.”

Jonny startles a little. “I didn’t—“

“No, it’s okay,” Patrick says. He wants to stop hugging his knees, but he can’t bring himself to. “I mean, I know you probably didn’t want me to know, but—”

“Patrick.” Jonny turns towards him a little, coming out of his uncomfortable hunch. “I’ve never told anyone about this.”

“I know. I get it.” Patrick fiddles with the neck of his beer bottle. “I just—look, I just don’t want you to think I’m going to—”

“No,” Jonny says, slowly, like Patrick’s being thick. “Listen. I haven’t told _anyone._ Not Brisson, not the team, not even—my mom was so mad when I came home with a timer, she thought I’d gotten one without her—“

Patrick stares. “You haven’t told your _mom?”_

“Patrick.” Jonny’s gotten closer on the couch, and he’s looking at Patrick with the intensity Patrick rarely gets off the ice. “I haven’t. Told. Anyone. But—” He pauses, breathes in. “But I was going to tell you.”

Patrick twitches in surprise. Jonny’s eyes are so, so dark and so focused on him, and this is the feeling he’s been hiding from so desperately for the last few hours. The treacherous feeling of hope. He swallows slowly. “You…”

“I wanted to.” Jonny glances down. “I mean, for a while now, but I didn’t think you…I mean, there was Carly, and Alexa, and Katie…”

Something flutters in Patrick’s chest, and it’s getting harder to tamp down. “You wanted to tell me when I was dating Katie?” he asks, because that was rookie year.

Jonny’s eyes go darker. “I wanted to tell you at World Juniors,” he says, and Patrick makes a sound that would be embarrassing except he doesn’t care, because Jonny’s like six inches away now. They shouldn’t—Jonny doesn’t have a timer yet—they still don’t _know_ —but Jonny’s leaning closer, and the fluttering in Patrick’s chest is out of control now. Each breath feels like electricity.

“You’re saying…” Patrick says, and then has to stop because, God, if he's wrong…

Jonny slides a hand onto his knee. “I’m saying,” he breathes, “that I wanted to tell you the first time I saw you skate,” and this time when Patrick makes an embarrassing noise, Jonny leans in and eats it out of his mouth.


	12. Chapter 12

If his first kiss with Jonny was already so much better than with any of the women he’s dated, this is a revelation.

Jonny leans into him, warm and close and pressed against Patrick in all the most wonderful of ways. It’s so good— _so_ good—that Patrick can’t quite believe it’s happening. Can’t believe it’s Jonny whose hands slide up to cover his biceps. Jonny whose mouth is soft and lush against Patrick’s, no barrier between them at all. Jonny whose tongue Patrick sucks on to make him moan.

It would maybe be better on the bed, but there’s no way Patrick’s making them pause and relocate. Not when he’s finally touching Jonny like this. Jonny’s hot and heavy and covers Patrick from head to toe, and nothing about this feels like too much. It feels like not enough: like he needs to keep reaching up and pulling Jonny in, like he’ll never be able to get enough. Like he’ll want more always.

They’re mostly making out right now, and it’s not like it’s not leading anywhere, but Jonny’s tongue in Patrick’s mouth already feels like a thousand times more than anything he’s ever had. It feels like safety and security and ownership and _finally, finally._ The feeling Patrick didn’t think he could have until his timer lit up.

“Fuck, Patrick,” Jonny says into his mouth. “You’re just—you’re so—” and Patrick lets out a breath that’s almost a sob, because how can Jonny want him like this? Patrick is the one no one ever wants quite enough—the one his mother sends worried looks when she doesn’t think he can see, the one who’s not good enough to have a soulmate waiting. And Jonny’s kissing him like he wants him more than anything in the world.

“Jonny,” he whispers, “Jonny, Jonny,” and Jonny rolls his hips down against Patrick and makes him groan.

Patrick was right about the sex he had with women not being as good as it could get. They’re only rolling their hips together through their clothes, and already he’s melting from the feeling of it. Maybe it would have felt this good with Mike, if he’d been able to stick it out the other night, but Patrick doesn’t think so. This is Jonny, and that makes every brush of finger or lick of tongue or snuffly breath into his skin amazing. It makes him love it.

“What do you want?” Jonny asks.

“Want you naked,” Patrick says, because that’s as far ahead as he can think, and Jonny laughs, this joyous little burst of sound, and tugs Patrick’s shirt up.

They separate to take their clothes off, and Patrick thinks for a second that they might actually make it to the bedroom. But then Jonny pulls off his own shirt and Patrick just has to suck one of his nipples into his mouth. That makes Jonny grab his ass and buck their hips together, and if their naked dicks aren’t touching soon Patrick is going to _die._

Pants are really difficult. Patrick’s thinking about never wearing them again, because the stupid flies won’t come undone, and they’re keeping Patrick away from Jonny’s dick. He’s never held someone else’s in his hand, and he really, really wants to.

They finally manage to get two pairs of pants off and two pairs of boxers down, and Jonny’s dick finally springs free and—God.

Patrick understands the impulse that would make someone go to their knees. He wants to feel that dick filling his mouth.

Jonny doesn’t give him a chance for that. His hands are on Patrick’s dick, which is a little distracting, and then he’s maneuvering Patrick back onto the couch so he can lie on top of him. Patrick has no objections to this, only minds that it takes so long until their dicks get lined up. Then they do and—“Fuck, fuck, God, _Jonny,”_ he says as Jonny sets them a fast pace, grinding against each other.

It’s a little rough, Jonny’s spit the only lube, but there’s no way Patrick’s stopping for anything right now. The rough glide gives a bite of friction to everything that he desperately needs, anyway. There isn’t enough air in the room—there isn’t enough Jonny, just this one person’s worth, and Patrick wants to fill the world with him. Wants there to be nothing in the world but Jonny. Feels like there is, when Jonny’s over him like this. Feeling nothing but the slide of their cocks together and—

Jonny makes a high-pitched whining sound and latches onto Patrick’s mouth, and Patrick feels the burst of slick as Jonny comes all over their stomachs. Patrick fucks up harder, using the wet glide to go even faster than they were, and everything is wet and hot and fire and _Jonny_.

Jonny kisses him more as Patrick comes, hips thrusting and arms tightening around Jonny as he gasps for air. Then he gentles a hand through Patrick’s hair as he comes down from it.

Patrick buries his face in Jonny’s neck. It doesn’t feel like they need to say anything: the way they’re lying, Jonny covering him, is perfect. He traces his fingers in a slow pattern along Jonny’s back.

“I was so afraid,” Jonny murmurs after a while, into the side of Patrick’s head.

“Hm?” Patrick tilts his head into Jonny’s, muzzy and slow. He can’t imagine fear right now. “Of what?”

Jonny sighs into Patrick’s hair. “That your timer was going to light up.”

Patrick’s stomach does something funny. He kisses the skin he can reach, along the side of Jonny’s face, and Jonny turns finally so that their mouths can meet again. They kiss some more, gentle, soft. Kisses Patrick can’t get enough of. Kisses he wants to keep forever.

***

They do make it to bed eventually, both of them stumbling along and sharing Patrick’s toothbrush and curling up around each other once they finally fall onto the mattress. Patrick almost doesn’t want to sleep—doesn’t want to lose track of this wonderful feeling of _Jonny_ by slipping into unconsciousness—but he’s too warm and comfortable with Jonny plastered to his back to stay awake, and he falls asleep within minutes.

When he wakes up, it’s to Jonny’s hand on his dick. He groans and tips his head back at the sparks of pleasure already tingling up and down his spine.

“Morning,” Jonny says in a sleep-roughened voice. He’s hard against Patrick’s ass, rocking gently.

“Fuck,” Patrick says. “Do you want to—here—”

He spreads his thighs a little so that Jonny can fuck in between them. It doesn’t quite work until he grabs the lube out of his bedside table, but then Jonny makes this amazing low sound and starts fucking in urgently. He jerks Patrick off at the same time, hand slick and tight, lips on the nape of Patrick’s neck, and Patrick loves him.

He can have this whenever he wants. He can have Jonny in his bed every night. He can wake up to this every day. As long as—as long as—

It’s the thought he was hiding from last night. He tries to shove it out of his head and focus on the glide of Jonny’s dick between his legs, but it won’t go away. He comes anyway, Jonny’s hand tightening and his pleasure spilling over, and a moment later Jonny comes gasping against his back, heavy and warm.

Patrick wants to have Jonny sweaty and sleepy and sated against him like this forever. But he doesn't know yet if he can.

It’s not the right time to think about this—lying in bed with Jonny, still panting from his orgasm. But his stomach’s gone twisty and cold. He tries not to ruin the moment—tries not to tense up—but he must not do a very good job, because after a moment, Jonny shifts against him and says, “Hey, hey.”

He lifts up from Patrick’s back and comes down on the other side, so that they’re face to face, though Patrick’s face is still mostly pressed into the bed. “Hey.” Jonny puts his hand on the side of Patrick’s neck. “Are you okay?”

Patrick doesn’t know. He feels so much more okay than he has in so long, but at the same time, there’s a coldness that won’t stop winding around his insides. He lifts his face out of the pillow and looks at Jonny, who’s looking back at him with eyes that are so close and so soft. “Are you, uh,” Patrick says. “Are you going to get a timer?”

Jonny stiffens right away. He doesn’t move, but the quality of his muscles changes everywhere he’s pressed against Patrick: all the post-orgasm languor gone. “Why would I do that?”

It’s a fair question. Patrick can’t imagine messing up what they have right now, if there’s nothing making them do it. But— “Because I have one,” he says. “Because it could still light up.”

Jonny pulls away, somehow. Not physically—he’s still there, right beside Patrick, but Patrick feels like he isn’t, anymore. “We don’t have anything to gain.”

“But—“ Patrick says, and then he stops, because Jonny’s trembling against him, very slightly, and Patrick’s not a total asshole. He doesn’t need to be a jerk to—Jonny, God, Jonny, _Jonny’s_ in his bed, and that could be enough, if only he were sure—

But Jonny’s already freaking out, and Patrick doesn’t need to do the same thing, right now. “Hey,” Patrick says, touching his hand to Jonny’s shoulder blade. “Hey, sh, sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

Jonny settles a little, but not all the way. “I just don’t know why you can’t just trust what we—”

“No, you’re right, I’m sorry,” Patrick says. “We don’t have to talk about it now.”

Jonny takes a slow breath, and Patrick can see him gradually relax. “Okay.”

“Do you…” Patrick nudges his way close to Jonny’s mouth, bumps their noses together. “Do you want to make out some more?”

“Okay,” Jonny says, voice small, but his mouth opens easily to Patrick’s, and the tension slowly leaves his muscles as they kiss.

***

They don’t talk about it for the next couple of days. They have practice that day, and a game the next, and every minute of it is amazing for Patrick: Jonny’s right there, right next to him in the locker room and on the ice and in every moment in between, and _his._ Maybe not entirely his, not yet—but every time Jonny looks at him and his face melts into an unguarded smile, Patrick can’t help but grin giddily back.

He can’t help going back to the conversation in bed that morning, though. He thinks about it while he cheers after Jonny scores a goal against the Red Wings, and he remembers Jonny’s question—why can’t he trust in what they have?

Patrick’s never felt about anyone the way he feels about Jonny. Jonny lights him up, in big ways and small, through his touch and his smile and his stupid jokes and his fast drives down the center of the ice. What they have is something they’ve built, slowly but surely, over the course of three years, and it’s not going to fade. It’s something they can work to get better at, just as surely as they’ve worked to get better at hockey.

Sure, if Jonny got a timer and it beeped for Patrick’s, it would feel safer. More secure. But maybe…maybe Patrick can live without that.

Jonny skates up to him and piles on, smiling and laughing and tapping their helmets together as he squeezes his arms around Patrick. Patrick squeezes back, and he knows what he has to do.

***

The receptionist at the TiMER clinic clearly recognizes Patrick when he comes in the next day. “Here to make another appointment?” she asks, smiling sweetly.

“Um, yeah.” Patrick can’t keep down the jittery feeling that makes him drum his fingers against the counter. “One timer removal.”

She arches her eyebrow at him, smile vanishing. “All right,” she says. “Let me just find the paperwork.”

It takes a while for her to find it. People don’t get their timers removed very often—you can’t get it back once you’ve had it taken out, and there’s almost never reason to, really. But she finds the forms at last and sends him to a little area of chairs to fill them out.

It takes maybe twenty minutes to go through the whole thing: they want to know any medical problem he might ever have had, and given his career in the NHL, there are kind of a lot of them. But it’s easier to list out pulled muscles and chipped teeth than to worry about what’s coming next.

The receptionist takes the clipboard from him when he’s done. “Might be a short wait before we can get you in,” she says. “Removal of a live timer is a tricky procedure.”

“It’s not live,” Patrick says, because that’s what got him into this mess in the first place. “It’s, uh, never been live.”

She gives him a condescending glance. “It’s lit,” she says, and Patrick looks down so fast he practically gets whiplash.

It’s…lit.

His timer is lit.

The little screen is glowing at him. The thing he’s wanted for so many years—and all he can feel is a wave of panic. He doesn’t want this now—doesn’t want things to get messed up, not when all he wants is to go home to Jonny and live their lives together and never—

“Pretty unusual to remove a timer the day it zeroes out,” the receptionist says, and holy shit, Patrick hasn’t even read the numbers yet.

“It’s zeroes,” he says weakly, and fuck, why did this have to happen _today?_ Why—

That’s when his timer starts beeping, and he looks up to see Jonny coming around the corner.


	13. Chapter 13

Patrick’s whole world freezes.

Jonny’s stopped in front of him, gaping, face pale. His left sleeve is rolled up, and on his wrist is a timer that’s flashing zeroes.

“What—what are you doing here?” Jonny asks.

“I came to get mine removed,” Patrick says. “But, um.” He waves a hand at Jonny’s arm.

Jonny swallows. “I wasn’t going to,” he says. “But then I thought. If—if it’s that important to you—”

And then Patrick can’t stay still any longer, and he’s moving, going straight towards Jonny and pulling his head down and seizing his mouth in a kiss.

***

They kiss until Patrick starts laughing, and then Jonny does too, a little, even while he’s asking what they’re laughing about. “It’s just,” Patrick says on a gasp of laughter, “I waited so long, and you were right there, and it’s so ridiculous—”

Jonny keeps pressing little kisses on Patrick’s face. “I was right, though,” he says into the skin of Patrick’s cheek. “We didn’t need the timers to tell us we were meant for each other.”

“But you got one anyway,” Patrick says, and Jonny smiles, a small, soft, warm thing.

“Yeah,” he whispers, leaning their foreheads together. “I decided that if I was going to ask you to trust what we had…well, I should probably do the same thing.”

Patrick has to kiss him for that.

When they finally break apart again, he looks down at their timers, both flashing zeroes. A matched set. A problem.

“What are we going to tell people?” he asks.

There’s a pause, and then Jonny’s eyes light. “We’ll have them taken out.”

“What?”

“Think about it,” Jonny says. “I’m not supposed to have one anyway. And you can tell people it was—I don’t know, solidarity or something—”

Patrick laughs. “That I just couldn’t bear to have a timer when yours was broken.”

Jonny’s lips are gorgeous when they quirk. “We’re just that devoted to each other. You know.” He leans their foreheads together again. “As teammates.”

Patrick brushes his thumb over Jonny’s timer. “But we’ll know,” he says. “It’ll be just for us.”

Jonny’s eyes go soft. “Just for us,” he repeats, and tilts Patrick’s mouth up toward his, and there’s a cough from the front desk.

They both freeze. Then they turn to see the receptionist staring at them, her mouth hanging open.

“Um,” Jonny says. “We have an NDA for you to sign.”

***

It takes a while—Jonny has to fill out the removal paperwork and both of them have to wait for an appointment with the doctor and then they have to get everyone at the clinic to sign NDAs. But a few hours later, they’re finally outside and free.

Patrick keeps looking down at the bandage on his wrist where the timer used to be. It was so important, for so many years, and now its absence feels like nothing. Not compared to Jonny next to him.

Jonny leans in close—not quite close enough that it would look weird to anyone walking by, but still. Close enough that Patrick can feel his presence stirring in his belly. “So, what’s next?”

“Hm, I don’t know.” Patrick breathes in the scent of Jonny, distinctive in the Chicago air. “But I’m sure we can think of something.”

Jonny pretends to think, nods. “Hm, you’re right. We should probably hit the gym.”

Patrick hits him in the arm.

“Why, did you have something else in mind?” Jonny asks him with wide eyes.

“Asshole.” Patrick scrunches up his nose. “It’s our timer night. You’re supposed to be nice to me.”

Jonny’s eyes go dark, and he runs his fingers across the edge of the bandage on Patrick’s wrist. He leans in again so that his breath tickles the edge of Patrick’s ear. “By ‘nice,’” he whispers, “do you mean I have to fuck you through the mattress? Because I’m pretty sure that’s what’s about to happen.”

Patrick shudders and closes his eyes, because if he doesn’t he’s going to start making out with Jonny on the sidewalk outside the TiMER clinic.

“Let’s go home,” he says.

***

They go back to Patrick’s place after a brief whispered conversation in which Jonny tries to convince Patrick they need to pick up condoms because “condoms are always good sense, Patrick” and Patrick points out that Jonny by his own admission hasn’t hooked up since way before their last medical screening and Patrick has never had anything up his ass before.

“I mean, you’re going to be the one fucking me, right?” Patrick asks.

Jonny’s cheeks flush, and his eyes burn into Patrick’s. “Yes,” he says in a low voice. “I mean, if you want.”

“Let’s hurry it up, then,” Patrick says, and drags Jonny home against any lingering objections.

Jonny doesn’t seem to have any objections at all once Patrick’s spread out on the bed, ass in the air. They don’t have any condoms, but they do have plenty of lube, and Jonny takes his time, fingering Patrick until Patrick’s whining at him to hurry it up. Patrick’s never done this before—never thought he might want to do it until a few weeks ago—but from the way Jonny’s fingers feel in him, he’s pretty sure it’s going to be amazing.

Jonny’s fingers crook inside him, and suddenly white sparks are going off in his vision. Change pretty sure to very sure.

“Jonny, come on,” he whines.

“I want you to be ready.” Jonny sounds like he’s breathing hard, and Patrick wants to see him, so he turns around, dislodging Jonny’s fingers.

Jonny glares at him. “I wasn’t done yet.”

“Yeah, you were.” Patrick was right about Jonny being disheveled: he has little spots of red high up on his cheeks, and his cock is leaking onto his stomach. “Get inside me already.”

Jonny looks even more put out. “It’s our timer night. Shouldn’t it be more romantic than that?”

“Fine.” Patrick leans up and kisses him, open-mouthed, dirty, and runs his hand over Jonny’s dick. Jonny moans and bucks up into it. “Jonny,” he whispers, “I want you to please, please put your big fat cock into my hole and fuck me until I can’t walk straight for a week.” He bites down on Jonny’s lip and breathes, “Is that romantic enough for you?”

Jonny’s shaking a little. “Fuck, fuck, lie down.”

Patrick lies on his back, even though Jonny tries to tell him he’ll be more comfortable on his stomach. “Fuck that, I wanna see you,” he says, and Jonny doesn’t seem like he’s about to object to that.

It is a little uncomfortable at first, when Jonny pushes in. But just the thought of it keeps Patrick going—Jonny’s dick _inside_ him—and Jonny’s making faces like this it really, really good for him.

“How does it feel?” Patrick asks as he tries to keep himself relaxed enough for this not to hurt too much.

“It’s so—tight,” Jonny says. His eyes are squeezed shut. “Are you—is it—”

“Just give it a minute.” Patrick breathes into it. He has a feeling it must be killing Jonny to stay like that without moving, but moving might kill Patrick, so.

“Does this help?” Jonny gets his hand around Patrick’s cock and strokes and it does help, actually. He’s distracted enough that the rest of the relaxing goes faster, and—

“Yeah, okay, move,” he says, and Jonny does.

It’s not quite amazing at first. But it’s Jonny, and that’s enough, and after a minute or so it starts feeling less uncomfortable and more…well, hot. Patrick can see why people are so into this, and he says so.

“I would hope so,” Jonny says. Jonny’s gasping a lot and looking like he’s trying not to shoot too soon. The sight of him like that makes it a lot hotter for Patrick, and he starts rocking up harder to meet Jonny’s thrusts, which probably doesn’t help with Jonny’s control, but he can’t stay still. The little pulses of goodness he’s been getting are starting to add up, and the pleasure is quickly overtaking him.

“Fuck, Jonny,” he says, and Jonny moans and thrusts in harder. A couple more strokes like that, and Jonny hits the spot that made Patrick see sparks before.

“Oh _fuck,”_ Patrick says, arching into it and clenching down, making Jonny shout. He’s drowning in it now, heels in the small of Jonny’s back urging him on, his cock drooling in his hand. “Jonny, I’m going to—”

“Yeah,” Jonny pants. “Yeah, Patrick,” and he thrusts in erratically a few times and then seizes, everything going hotter as his come pumps into Patrick’s ass. Just the thought of that is enough to have Patrick crying out and spurting all over their chests.

Jonny collapses next to him, and Patrick puts an arm and nestles closer as soon as he can move. “I was right,” Patrick says.

“’Bout what?” Jonny says, voice slurring.

“Sex really is better with your timer person.”

There’s no way Jonny _isn’t_ going to look smug at that, though he does try to hide it. “Or maybe with someone of the gender you’re attracted to,” he snarks.

Patrick pretends to think about it. “Nope. Pretty sure it’s you.”

Jonny leans closer, lips just next to Patrick’s cheekbone. “I love you,” he whispers.

Patrick twitches in surprise. That makes Jonny pull back, like he thinks maybe Patrick doesn’t, and Patrick has to fumble his hands onto him and hold on. “No, no, of course—sorry, I just wasn’t expecting— _Jonny_ —”

“What?” Jonny asks, guarded.

Patrick makes himself settle, looks into Jonny’s clear brown eyes. “I love you, too.”

Jonny smiles, helpless and silly, and relaxes against Patrick. “Happy timer night,” Jonny whispers.

Patrick gives him another kiss—slow, thorough, something he gets to keep forever. “You, too,” he says.

***

They lie there for maybe half an hour, too drowsy to clean up, before Patrick sits bolt upright.

“What?” Jonny asks, opening his eyes and half sitting up in panic. “What is it?”

“Shit, I have to call my mom,” Patrick says, and Jonny collapses back onto the bed, laughing.

***

It takes about three minutes in the locker room for Sharpy to notice that Patrick’s missing his timer.

“What the _fuck?”_ Sharpy roars, making Duncs jump and almost trip over a helmet.

That leads to kind of an awkward conversation, but then there are lots of congratulations and also champagne later. “I didn’t get to throw you a stag night!” Sharpy wails at Patrick when they’re a few glasses in, so Patrick’s pretty sure he’s going to be stuck with having one of those pretty soon. Maybe he’ll make Jonny come along.

The media is slower to notice—they’re too focused on Jonny’s wrist and the “tragedy” there to notice Patrick’s until two games later. Then, of course, they’re on him like sharks on blood.

“Well, you all know about Jonny’s timer, of course,” Patrick says when the frenzy has died down enough that he can actually answer a question. “After that, well, it, uh, it didn’t seem fair that I should still have one when he didn’t.”

“So this is out of solidarity,” someone says, and Patrick nods.

“Yeah.” It’s not even a lie, really. “And—”

There’s more, and it’s harder to say, but he’s been doing a lot of thinking these past few days. Thinking about how he’s been living his life, about the things he wishes someone had told him six years ago.

“And also about me, I guess,” he says. “Timers are great for most people—I’m a huge fan—but mine wasn’t a good part of my life anymore. It was making me live for the future. And right now, playing with the Hawks, this is what I should be living for. I can’t tell you how lucky I am to be here, and if it takes losing my timer for me to appreciate that fully, then it’s worth it.”

“Does this mean you’ve given up on ever finding your soulmate?” the reporter asks.

Patrick’s eyes leap to Jonny, even though he knows they shouldn’t. Jonny’s looking back, and his eyes crinkle into a smile. Patrick has to look away before his own smile becomes too blindingly obvious. “I think I’ll manage,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> Come play with me on the [tumbles](http://linskywords.tumblr.com)!


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